NASA has begun a three-month effort to calibrate the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) so that the $10 billion (approximately Rs 74,710 crore) observatory can begin its mission: to study the universe like never before. It also recently saw the first light particles pass through the entire telescope. So far, this is the closest scientists have come to using the telescope to achieve its ultimate goal. During the initial process, the images remain blurred, and scientists will slowly use them to fine-tune the telescope. The observatory is expected to be ready for scientific research this summer.
James Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) detected the first starlight photons passing through the telescope, the agency said. NASA added that a team of engineers and scientists will now use data acquired by NIRCam to gradually align the telescope’s 18 mirrors to form a new lens.
Last Christmas, James Webb blasted off on an Ariane 5 rocket. Since then, scientists have carried out several processes to unfold it. A full month after launch, the telescope has reached Lagrangian point 2 (L2), about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, from where it will quietly observe interesting events in the universe. L2 is the gravitationally stable point in space.
The project’s lead scientist, John Mather, recently said that the telescope’s “instruments are cooling,” but they are already starting to detect individual particles of light (photons). According to a report by Space.com, Nobel laureate and astrophysicist Mather said there are no images yet to show the world, but he hopes they will develop one soon.
NASA said in a statement that the telescope tuning process will take longer than previous space telescopes because James Webb’s primary mirror consists of 18 separate segments that need to function as a single high-precision mirror Optical surfaces work together.
It will take about five months for James Webb to go through a rigorous commissioning process before it actually gets to work. Its images are expected to differ from those taken by Hubble because it will see things mostly in the infrared, while Hubble uses different infrared wavelengths as well as visible light.
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