‘Absolutely phenomenal’: Webb Telescope’s first images have scientists giddy

Scientists have given the James Webb Space Telescope an A+ grade after it exceeded expectations and produced exceptional test photos.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has passed its first assignment with flying colours, after it handed in a spectacular photo to NASA.

On Wednesday, officials at the space agency shared a stunning photo of a star captured by the telescope during its alignment process, in which several in-focus galaxies and distant stars can be seen in the background.

The Webb’s primary mirror is made up of an array of 18 individual mirrors that, once properly aligned, will act as a single mirror.

And even though that self-alignment is still in the works, researchers said they were blown away by the test images already being captured by the fledgling telescope.

“The images are focused together as finely as the laws of physics allow,” Marshall Perrin, Webb deputy telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, told CNN.

“But as we were focusing on those bright stars, we couldn’t help but see the rest of the universe coming into focus behind them, to see the more distant stars and galaxies coming into view.”

“We said last fall that we would know that the telescope is working properly when we have an image of a star that looks like a star,” Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told Cosmos magazine.

“Now you’re seeing that image. And I’m happy to say that the optical performance of the telescope is absolutely phenomenal, it is really working extremely well. The performance is as good if not better than our most optimistic prediction.”