It’s Not Just a Star! The Latest James Webb Space Telescope Image Explained


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It’s Not Just a Star! The Latest James Webb Space Telescope Image Explained

 

The next great observatory is sharpening its vision and well on the way to cracking mysteries of the universe.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched in December, arrived at its station nearly 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth in January, and has been hard at work preparing to conduct science the $10 billion mission was designed for. The spacecraft notched another key milestone in its preparations when it completed « fine phasing » on March 11, the agency announced on Wednesday (March 16).

The telescope has also met every optical parameter engineers needed and is cleanly delivering light to its instruments. The achievement leaves NASA fully confident that the observatory will meet its science objectives.

The James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) has recently captured its most detailed image yet, less than three months after its launch in late December. NASA has confirmed that they have reached a new milestone in their efforts to set up the state-of-the-art telescope’s optical system as it prepares for its first scientific observations in the summer. The new image shows a single, bright star against a backdrop of other, dimmer stars and galaxies in the far distance. This is the highest resolution infrared image ever taken from space. Webb is the next great space science observatory following Hubble, designed to answer outstanding questions about the Universe and to make breakthrough discoveries in all fields of astronomy. Webb will see farther into our origins: from the formation of stars and planets to the birth of the first galaxies in the early Universe.


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