NASA unveils the James Webb Space Telescope’s first images
captured by the revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope, or JWST, today. The image represents the early stages of the telescope’s 18 main mirror segments properly aligning before JWST reaches its full potential.
The image is blurry, but this is actually a good starting point in the long process of adjusting JWST’s mirrors to take ultra-sharp photos of the distant Universe. The 18 points of light that appear in the image all represent the same isolated star, known as HD 84406, seen by a different primary mirror segment.
The process of collecting the light used to generate the image mosaic took about 25 hours, according to NASA. The 18 images of HD 84406 were pieced together from more than 1,500 images collected as Webb was pointed to various positions around the expected location of the star. The mirror will begin to align correctly following the
that the telescope will make over the coming months. Ultimately, those 18 stars will become one as all of the mirror segments are aligned to create a seamless surface.Each image of the singular star is labeled in the order it was captured.
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