In the early morning of February 12, Beijing time, NASA's James Weber Space Telescope project team held a press conference and released the first photo taken by the telescope, for this space telescope that has been delayed for nearly 30 years and has attracted attention from all walks of life around the world, the release of the first image is of great significance, because it marks that this nearly $10 billion device can operate normally, will live up to the high expectations of scientists for it, and is expected to help scientists uncover more cosmic mysteries.
The first photo taken by the James Webb Space Telescope was actually 18 because it was taken without the 18 main mirrors of the telescope fully aligned, and each of the light points in the photo corresponds to a piece of the telescope's main mirror, and this point of light is the target that NASA uses to help align the telescope's 18 main mirrors, a bright star called HD84406. In the future, when the telescope's 18 main mirrors are all aligned, these 18 light points will be combined into a single point of light, and the James Webb Space Telescope will begin to truly observe the work. At that time, a bright star like HD84406 will not be a target for the James Webb Space Telescope, because such an observation target is too bright for the telescope.
NASA also released a selfie photo of the James Webb Space Telescope, which was taken by a dedicated camera mounted on the telescope that will play an important role in the alignment phase of the telescope's main mirror. It is expected that the main mirror alignment of the James Webb Space Telescope will take half a year, and it is expected that in early April this year, the main mirror of the telescope will be initially aligned, followed by fine-tuning, and around June, the James Webb Space Telescope will begin to work.
At a press conference early this morning, Lee Feinberg, component manager for the Weber Optical Telescope at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said, "This amazing telescope not only spreads its wings, but now it has opened its eyes." "The first image of the James Webb Space Telescope was taken in the early morning of February 2, local time, and the entire shooting work lasted 25 hours, resulting in a total of 1500 images, and finally got this exciting photo.
Launched on December 24, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope, unlike the Hubble Space Telescope currently in service, operates in infrared mode and will be able to capture faint signals from the early Big Bang, promising to help scientists uncover many secrets about the early days of the universe. For this delayed, nearly tens of billions of dollars device, the wait is worth it, expecting to see the first truly meaningful photo taken by the James Webb Space Telescope!