NASA James Webb Space Telescope Finally Finds Photons as Primary, Segmented Mirror Starts Aligning

NASA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) found the first photons of starlight with the help of the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) sensor.

This is a significant achievement. However, it does not yet represent the images that will be available after the observatory, and its payloads have been aligned and commissioned. It commemorates the JWST's shift from a technical marvel to a functioning telescope.

After turning on the equipment and deploying the mirror segments, Scott Acton and Chanda Walker of Ball Aerospace and Lee Feinberg of NASA Goddard wrote in an update that the team began the several tasks necessary to configure and calibrate the telescope to do its job.

Because Webb's primary mirror comprises 18 distinct mirror segments that must function together as a single high-precision optical surface, the telescope commissioning procedure will take substantially longer than prior space telescopes.

Importance of James Webb Space Telescope's First Light

According to Inverse, the first step in aligning the 18 beryllium and gold segments that make up Webb's mirror is to confirm that photons can travel into the telescope and appear on its detectors.

To get each component in the proper position to function together, the team must adjust their respective positions by focusing on the star HD 84406.

Any final Webb image will effectively be a stitched-together composite, which means that when the Webb first looks at HD 84406, it will create 18 slightly distinct, hazy pictures of the star.

The engineers must match each image to the correct segment. Once they know which part is creating which image (which is more complex than it appears), they may move the pieces to look at a single location with higher precision.

Then they'll go on to segment alignment, which involves bringing each mirror segment in and out of focus to create 18 in-focus images.

Once the engineers have accomplished this, they may go on to a process known as "image stacking," in which each segmented image is combined to create a unified appearance with all of the light falling in one spot. However, the parts continue to function as 18 telescopes.

To get beyond that problem, you'll need to use two procedures called "coarse phasing" and "fine phasing" - they're a little complicated to describe, but they work together to better align the segments and generate a more precise and clear image.

Finally, the engineers must do field-of-view corrections and other changes to ensure that the segments are perfectly aligned. The engineers' task, of course, will not be finished at that moment. They'll then have to start commissioning Webb's many instruments.

JWST's Alignment Feels Like Hubble Space Telescope 2.0

The Webb Space Telescope's voyage to capturing unexplored areas of the cosmos will be similar to its Hubble Space Telescope counterpart, Futurism said.

NASA said they designed Hubble Space Telescope in the late 1960s and launched it in April 1990. The telescope created its first light picture in May, which you can see here. Even though it was around 50 percent sharper than a terrestrial telescope's view of the same stars, it wasn't perfect.

The Hubble's photos improved with time. The first views of Jupiter, including this true-color shot acquired by its Wide Field/Planetary Camera, were published in March 1991.

By 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope had caught the now-iconic Eagle Nebula Gas Pillars, and the switch to stunning deep space pictures had begun. The visuals were better, more captivating, and eerily lovely.

Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.