The space telescope James Webb will not start real work until the summer. Now the mirror is being refined and the equipment is still being cooled.
18.3. 17:43
Space telescope James Webb still tunes his mirrors and devices.
As an exercise, on March 16, it took a picture of the star about 2,000 light-years away.
The image is confusingly sharp, not hazy at all. In addition, galaxies stand out far away in deep space behind the star.
The designers of the mirror marveled at the accuracy of the training image at Goddard Space Center in Maryland, USA. No problems have been observed with the web optics.
Picture gives indications that since the summer, Webb offers all-time images of space, first from deep space, later from exoplanets, for example.
The star described is in the classification of the stars with the symbol 2MASS J17554042 + 6551277. It is about 2,000 light-years away and more than 16 times as bright as our own Sun.
The target was chosen because the star was suitably separated from the other stars when viewed from Earth and the Web. A red filter was used to take the picture. This improved the contrast of the image.
“Of course, the Hubble Space Telescope can also take such pictures, but only at the wavelength of visible light,” compared Jane Rigbya researcher and webbing designer at the NASA Space Flight Center in Maryland, Space.comwebsite.
Webb describes the infrared radiation of space from the summer, i.e. thermal radiation that is not visible to the human eye.
With infrared devices, Webb sees new objects and also farther than another covered space telescope, Hubble.
The Webb telescope was designed to be up to a hundred times more sensitive than Hubble. It now appears that that target has been exceeded, said Nassa researchers on Wednesday.
The mirror was aligned using the NIRCam camera of the star. It is one of Webb’s four scientific devices. The other three are still waiting to be opened and adjusted.
Webb is the first space telescope assembled from separate mirrors. The large main mirror mirror consists of 18 separate, hexagonal and smaller mirrors.
The alignment of the mirrors is crucial. They must be nanometers precisely attached to each other. In this way, they form one large mirror surface with a diameter of 6.5 meters. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.
Webb had to pack the flight into space to make it fit on top of a launch vehicle. The opening of the mirror in space in January – February went smoothly, despite the complex and multi-stage operation of air traffic control.
The web was designed for decades. In total, it has cost more than ten billion dollars, or about nine billion euros.
In summer Webb first describes distant objects in deep space. The mirror can be used to see heat objects that are more than 13.5 billion light-years away.
Previously, such a distant space has not been directly described. Something surprising will surely open up to the eyes. We will quite certainly receive new information from the early moments of the universe.
Webb may witness how the first stars and galaxies were born into the universe.
“We’re looking back in time at galaxies where light is what it looked like billions of years ago,” Rigby said. Space.comaccording to the website.
Webb’s targeting will be completed in early May. The equipment is then further cooled for more than a month.