Technology
Nasa reveals first images from James Webb Space Telescope as it hunts for alien worlds
NASA has revealed the first images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The telescope is out on a deep space mission and will be looking for signs of life in the universe.
NASAThe James Webb Space Telescope took this selfie[/caption]
NASAIt also took this image which shows show multiple views of a star called HD 84406[/caption]
The US space agency tweeted a selfie that the telescope took and a rather blurry image that shows multiple views of a star called HD 84406.
Nasa warned that the first images would be blurry but we can expect great things to come.
It’s the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope and it cost around $10billion (£7.3billion).
The telescope is now fully deployed, which means it’s finally unfurled its huge mirrors and the sun-shield that will help it look for signs of life in the universe.
The telescope is essentially a massive mirror that can use infrared to see way beyond what we’ve seen before.
Nasa said in a statement: “The James Webb Space Telescope is nearing completion of the first phase of the months-long process of aligning the observatory’s primary mirror using the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument.
Most read in Tech
“The team’s challenge was twofold: confirm that NIRCam was ready to collect light from celestial objects, and then identify starlight from the same star in each of the 18 primary mirror segments.
“The result is an image mosaic of 18 randomly organized dots of starlight, the product of Webb’s unaligned mirror segments all reflecting light from the same star back at Webb’s secondary mirror and into NIRCam’s detectors.”
Nasa said that although the first image just looks like blurry starlight, we can expect “unprecedented views of the universe this summer”.
The team behind the telescope now needs to adjust it so that it can get the perfect shots.
Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument, said: “The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding.
“We were so happy to see that light makes its way into NIRCam.”
The image capturing process began on February 2.
It took 25 hours for the telescope to generate 1,560 images of the star in question so experts could stitch the photo together.
The James Webb Space Telescope also found the time to take a quick selfie.
Nasa said: “This “selfie” was created using a specialized pupil imaging lens inside of the NIRCam instrument that was designed to take images of the primary mirror segments instead of images of space.
“This configuration is not used during scientific operations and is used strictly for engineering and alignment purposes.
“In this case, the bright segment was pointed at a bright star, while the others aren’t currently in the same alignment.”
The telescope’s images should only get clearer as time moves on.
The first scientific images should be released to the world this summer.
More to follow…
For the latest news on this story keep checking back at Sun Online.
The-sun.com is your go-to destination for the best celebrity news, sport news, real-life stories, jaw-dropping pictures and must-see video.
Like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TheSunUS and follow us from our main Twitter account at @TheUSSun.
