"It is emotional," Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager, said today.
(Image credit: NASA) |
The James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first coarse images of a distant star and charge scientists are, to put it mildly, rapturous.
Moment (Feb. 11), NASA unveiled the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, which has linked starlight for the first time using its NIRCam instrument (which is basically a camera that also helps to keep the primary glass's parts aligned).
"This amazing telescope has not only spread its bodies, but it has now opened its eyes,"Lee Feinberg, the Webb optic telescope element director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said moment during a news conference.
"This is the first time we are getting data on glasses that are actually at zero graveness and using starlight to illuminate the primary glass,"Feinberg added.
Webb's first image of the sky was taken in the veritably early morning ofFeb. 2, Marcia Rieke, top investigator for the NIRCam instrument and regents professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona in Tucson, said during the news conference.
The image, which you can see over, shows a star called HD 84406. The starlight was seen through each of Webb's 18 glass parts in its primary glass, so the performing image shows a mosaic of 18 scattered bright blotches.
"This is an original phase where each member is acting as a separate telescope in combination with a participated secondary glass,"Feinberg said.
"As Webb aligns and focuses over the coming many months, these 18 blotches will sluggishly come a single star,"Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's Associate Director for the Science Mission Directorate, said on Twitter.
(Image credit: NASA) |
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