James Webb Telescope Sends Home a Selfie and 18 Images of Starlight
The New York Times
The spacecraft recorded a series of images of a target star that will be used to help its mirrors prepare for scientific research.
Two months after a dramatic Christmas morning launch and several spine-tingling weeks of gyrations and unfoldings, the James Webb Space Telescope has achieved what astronomers celebrate as “first light.”
Actually, it was first lights.
NASA on Friday released 18 images of a star in the constellation Ursa Major known as HD 84406, as seen through each of the 18 segments that make up the telescope’s primary mirror and recorded by the Webb’s workhorse instrument, the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The Webb astronomers will now spend the next few months wiggling each of those mirror segments back and forth and back and forth until that star becomes one.
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