Left Awestruck With James Webb Space Telescope's Amazing Shots? Here's How the High-Powered JWST Captures Stunning Intricate Snaps

Ever since the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) started operating in July 2022, earthlings have been greeted with a wide variety of stunning space snaps. From the Carina Nebula to the Pillars of Creation to thePhantom Galaxy, there are various cosmic shots that the JWST was able to beautifully capture.

JWST Snaps

Each JWST snap beautifully resulted from an extraordinary array of technologies and instruments that were tuned finely in order to generate dazzling cosmic views. Space Academy also notes that, in fact, the shots are so intricate and fine to the point that they could be mistaken for digitally-created images.

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How Does the JWST Capture Intricate and Stunning Cosmic Snaps?

Discover Magazine reports that the process of capturing such beautiful shots starts when a distant object's light strikes the telescope's gold-plated, 21-foot-wide mirror. By dividing them in such a manner, it becomes easier for NASA scientists to deploy the telescope into orbit. However, the telescope must be calibrated with great precision in order to serve as a huge mirror and keep its focus sharp.

Wavefront sensing is what enables the completion of such calibrations. This process of realigning is something that engineers must do again and again every few weeks in order to make sure that the segments don't move by a few nanometer tenths.

Optical telescope element manager Lee Feinberg at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center notes how all mirrors are aligned to a human hair thickness of 1/10,000.

JWST Predecessor: Hubble Space Telescope

In contrast to its prominent predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, the JWST does not see the same light seen by humans. Being an infrared telescope, the JWST sees longer wavelengths compared to those from clear lights.

This makes it suitable for viewing distant galaxies. Such is the case because the universe expands continuously. As galaxies get farther away, their light becomes redder and eventually invisible to humans and even to Hubble. However, JWST has the capacity to thrive with this exact blind spot.

While the Hubble Deep Fields have revealed the mysteries of deep space to some extent, there are still many distant galaxies that the Hubble is incapable of probing through. The JWST, however, was able to come up with a deep field image of its own that enabled the telescope to capture galaxies that were fainter.

JWST's NIRCam and MIRI

On top of this, the JWST is also equipped with the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), which is one of the telescope's mounted instruments. The NIRCam functions alongside a different camera called the MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Working alongside each other, the two can trace vast wavelength ranges and enable astronomers to see virtually everything, be it newborn stars or comets.

Each camera has its own set of filters that are specifically designed for particular infrared spectrum areas. Most of the photos are multiple filler composites, which usually cover several exposures through a process known as dithering. In such a process, the JWST's frame is shifted after exposure in order to remove the cosmic rays' corrupting impacts. Because of this, a bad pixel gets filled with data from good pixels.

Principal investigator Rieke notes that in conducting a broad sky survey, they use nine filters, for nine different exposures across numerous frames. This equates to 81 exposures for just one frame and around 7,000 for the whole composite. Clearly, JWST's methodology is above average.

Exposure time, the telescope's coronagraph, and gravitational lensing, among others, also enable the further intricacy captured by the JWST.

Because infrared light cannot be seen with the naked eye, the JWST does not capture how the cosmos would look like if humans were to see it firsthand. Nevertheless, this does not make them fake. In fact, it is the only way to look deeper into the universe's mysteries.

Check out more news and information on the James Webb Space Telescope in Science Times.