NASA unveils the first EVER images from its James Webb Space Telescope including a SELFIE [View all]
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Source: Daily Mail
NASA unveils the first EVER images from its James Webb Space Telescope including a SELFIE - but reassures the blurry snaps are just a 'starting point' as it fine-tunes its mirrors
NASA has unveiled the first ever images from its James Webb Space Telescope, including a 'selfie' of its primary mirror. The $10 billion (£7.4 billion) observatory settled into its orbit one million miles from our planet last month, and is gearing up to look back in time towards the dawn of the universe. It had been expected to take its first starry images in May, for release to the public in June, but the US space agency revealed plans to share preliminary snaps today instead.
The result is an image mosaic of 18 randomly organised dots of starlight, the product of Webb's unaligned mirror segments all reflecting light from the same star back at its secondary mirror and into the telescope's main camera, called the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). What looks like a simple image of blurry starlight now becomes the foundation to align and focus the telescope in order for Webb to deliver unprecedented views of the universe this summer, NASA said. Over the next month or so, a team of scientists will gradually adjust the mirror segments until the 18 images become a single star.
NASA had earlier cautioned that the images would not resemble the stunning photos of the cosmos taken by similar space telescopes. Instead, the space agency said the images would be blurry and repetitive because they have been taken as part of the telescope's fine-tuning process.
Read more: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10502085/NASA-unveil-images-James-Webb-Space-Telescope-today.html
More photos https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/
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