![]() ![]() ![]() The work, however, has paid off, as the telescope has sailed through all of its major commissioning milestones without the smallest hiccup. As a result, the James Webb Space Telescope project faced many delays and cost overruns. To make the mission possible, the engineering teams at NASA and its partner organizations had to develop completely new technologies that had never been flown in space before. No other telescope before has been launched to space with a foldable mirror. The performance is as good if not better than our most optimistic prediction." And I'm happy to say that the optical performance of the telescope is absolutely phenomenal, it is really working extremely well. "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 the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center said in the briefing. The Webb telescope was designed to be up to 100 times more sensitive than Hubble, and that goal has not just been accomplished but exceeded, NASA officials said in the briefing. However, the two observatories don't image the universe in the same wavelengths: Hubble is an expert at visible and ultraviolet radiation and Webb sits firmly in the realm of the infrared. Randy Kimble, NASA's Webb project scientist for integration, test and commissioning, told in an earlier interview that where Hubble requires weeks to obtain some of its best deep field images, Webb will accomplish the same results within hours. Without even really breaking a sweat, we're seeing back in time to galaxies that we're seeing the light as it looked billions of years ago." "This is going to be the future from now on. "There's no way that Webb can look for 2,000 seconds at any point in the sky, and not get an incredibly deep field," Rigby said. Webb, however, is set to beat Hubble in its ability to peer into the depths. Deep fields are a specialty of the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb's predecessor. Such photographs, focusing on small sections of the sky, aim to capture the most distant objects in the universe. These distant galaxies make Webb's first image a so-called deep field. Even more interesting than the star itself, however, is its background, revealing dozens of specks and dots - each a distant galaxy that was previously out of reach. The image released on Wednesday shows a bright-shining amber-colored star emanating streams of light across the universe. The star, 100 times fainter than what can be seen with the naked eye, was chosen not for its scientific significance but purely for its brightness and location.Īt the beginning of the alignment process, the telescope was delivering 18 individual images of the star, with each of the primary mirror segments acting as a telescope on its own. When the mirror alignment process started in early January, the ground team pointed the telescope at HD 84406, what the scientists described as a very "boring star" in our Milky Way galaxy.
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