While the blurry, misaligned pictures might disappoint the uninitiated, they are almost exactly what engineers were expecting at this point in the observatory's complex commissioning.
So far, Feinberg said, the tedious work has gone remarkably smoothly, with no major problems or setbacks.
An initial image from the James Webb Space Telescope showing 18 images of a target star as seen by the primary mirror's 18 segments. Each segment is equipped with actuators to tilt them as required to eventually merge the reflections into a single beam of focused light.
To align the mirror segments, ground controllers have aimed the telescope at a star 242 light years away near the bowl of the Big Dipper known as HD 84406. Using one of Webb's four instruments, the Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, the team began mapping out the reflections from each of the 18 primary mirror segments.
Marshall Perrin, Webb deputy telescope scientist, said engineers expected the mirror segments to be misaligned by up to a millimeter at the start of the alignment process. To make sure they found the target star in each segment, more than 1,500 images were taken over a region of the sky the size of a full moon.
As for NIRCam, Marcia Rieke, principal investigator at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said her team was thrilled.
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The James Webb Space Telescope's first images have scientists excited (and a bit relieved)Chelsea “Foxanne” Gohd joined Space.com in 2018 and is now a Senior Writer, writing about everything from climate change to planetary science and human spaceflight in both articles and on-camera in videos. With a degree in Public Health and biological sciences, Chelsea has written and worked for institutions including the American Museum of Natural History, Scientific American, Discover Magazine Blog, Astronomy Magazine and Live Science. When not writing, editing or filming something space-y, Chelsea 'Foxanne' Gohd is writing music and performing as Foxanne, even launching a song to space in 2021 with Inspiration4. You can follow her on Twitter chelsea_gohd and foxannemusic.
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