NASA’s James Webb space telescope has produced its first unified image of a distant star, using all 18 mirrors across the craft.
NASA released the image after completing a critical step in aligning the 18 mirrors across the space telescope, which is currently about 1 million miles away from Earth. The space agency has been working to configure the 18 individual hexagonal mirrors to act as one giant 21-foot mirror, capable of taking the sharpest astronomical images to date.
On Wednesday, NASA announced it had completed the “fine phasing” stage of the alignment, meaning that “every optical parameter that has been checked and tested is performing at, or above, expectations.”
“The team also found no critical issues and no measurable contamination or blockages to Webb’s optical path. The observatory is able to successfully gather light from distant objects and deliver it to its instruments without issue,” the agency added.
To align the mirrors on James Webb, NASA decided to use the space telescope to focus on a “generic star” in our galaxy, space agency officials said in a press conference. The star in question is called “2MASS J17554042+6551277,” and is about 100 times dimmer than what the human eye can see.
However, NASA didn’t have information on hand on how distant the star is from the planet Earth. The space agency simply picked it because the star had the right brightness levels necessary to help align the mirrors.
The unified image itself shows the infrared light from the 2MASS J17554042+6551277. The “spikes” around the star result from the infrared light diffracting over the hexagonal shape of the space telescope’s primary mirror. Surrounding the star are some distant galaxies, which are likely billions of light years away, NASA officials said. The red color was chosen to optimize the visual contrast.
The James Webb space telescope is slated to begin scientific operations in July, which will include studying galaxies and planets orbiting other stars. In the meantime, NASA still needs to configure and fine-tune the other infrared instruments on board the space telescope.
“Although there are months to go before Webb ultimately delivers its new view of the cosmos, achieving this milestone means the team is confident that Webb’s first-of-its-kind optical system is working as well as possible,” NASA added.
