NASA shares James Webb Telescope’s 1st photo of the universe and a selfie

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched from Earth on December 25, 2021, has taken its first photos, which have been shared by NASA.

NASA shared two images taken by the JWST: one is a part of a mosaic taken by the $10 billion telescope and shows a star called HD 84406.

The other, meanwhile, is a ‘selfie’ of the cutting-edge cosmic observatory.

Both can be seen in the embedded post below.

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The reason that the photos shared by NASA aren’t as remarkable as the cosmic vistas we are used to seeing from the Hubble Space Telescope is because the JWST’s mirrors have not been aligned to perfection yet. While the JWST can still image the universe, NASA has said that it will continue to align the telescope’s 18 mirrors for a perfect alignment over the next three months.

While neither of the photos demonstrate the extraordinary imaging capabilities of the JWST, they nonetheless mark a major milestone in the telescope’s journey thus far.

The JWST first “opened its eyes” after deployment and captured its first light on its primary imaging equipment, a near infrared camera called NIRCam, on February 2 this year, after making an extraordinary 1.5 million mile journey to its destination.

Its first images were an engineering test to check whether light was entering the JWST’s sensors unobstructed, and the success left the NASA team in charge of the telescope delighted.

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“The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding. We were so happy to see that light makes its way into NIRCam,” said Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument and regents professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, in a statement released by NASA.

The team in charge of the JWST expect to release more detailed photos of the cosmos this summer once the JWST is fully operational and its mirrors are perfectly aligned.