Webb Telescope alignment allows the image to show a star

A major milestone has been reached in the operation of the James Webb Space Telescope, as engineers continue to focus on the observatory’s view of the universe.

We’ve Seen These 18 Points beforebut now Organizer. Oh, what a beautiful organization.

This single star, designated HD 84406, is currently installed on this single star Webb Telescope, with engineers working to align 18 gold mirrors. Eventually, these 18 points will merge to form a single image. Initially, these points were thought to be 18 pseudo-random scatter points, but are now oriented to match the honeycomb shape of the primary mirror, in a process known as micro-image identification, according to NASA. announcement.

“We oriented the clipping points for this array so that they have the same relative positions as the physical mirrors,” Matthew Lallo, a systems scientist at the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute, said in the statement.

With the points targeted to form a hexagon, the team will now begin to line up the segments as each segment’s large positioning errors are corrected. The team will also update the secondary mirror’s alignment, which will make each point appear more focused; It would basically be like giving each mirror a pair of glasses. The third stage is called image aggregation and it’s exactly what it looks like: the team will stack all 18 points of light on top of each other to form a single point.

The current mirror orientation should make steps two and three more manageable. As Lalo explained, once the image stacking process begins, the “familiar arrangement” of the 18 mirrors will give the team an “intuitive and natural way to visualize changes in clip regions in the context of the entire primary mirror.” He added that the commissioning team “can now, in fact, watch the primary mirror slowly form into its exact, intended shape.”

The alignment phase started on February 2nd and should be completed by the end of the month. Launched on Christmas Day 2021, Webb is expected to enter the science phase of the mission in June, where it will explore some of the most distant regions in the universe, the evolution of galaxies over time, and the atmospheres of exoplanets. , among other celestial phenomena.

bone: Webb Space Telescope successfully sees first flash of light.