Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA website in full focus, ready to put the instrument into operation
The alignment of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is now complete. After a full review, it was confirmed that the observatory was able to capture sharp, well-focused images with each of its four powerful onboard scientific instruments. Following the completion of the seventh and final stage of telescope alignment, the team held a series of key decision-making meetings and unanimously agreed that Webb was ready to move on to the next and final series of preparations known as the commissioning of scientific instruments. . This process will take about two months before scientific operations begin in the summer.
Space Telescope Image Sharpness Test. Credit: NASA / STScI
The alignment of the telescope in all Web instruments can be seen in a series of images that capture the entire field of view of the observatory.
“These remarkable test images from a successfully aligned telescope demonstrate what people from different countries and continents can achieve when they have a bold scientific vision for space exploration,” said Lee Feinberg, element manager of the Webb optical telescope at NASA’s Space Flight Center. Goddard.
The Webb telescope completes the alignment phase. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
The optical characteristics of the telescope continue to be better than the most optimistic forecasts of the engineering team. Webb mirrors now direct fully focused light collected from space downward onto each instrument, and each instrument successfully captures images with the light delivered to them. The image quality delivered to all instruments is “diffraction limited”, which means that the fineness of the details that can be seen is as good as possible, given the size of the telescope. From now on, the only changes in the mirrors will be very small, periodic adjustments to the main segments of the mirror.
“With the completion of the telescope alignment and half-life effort, my role in the James Webb Space Telescope mission is over,” said Scott Acton, Webb’s wavefront scientist, Ball Aerospace. “These images have profoundly changed the way I see the universe. We are surrounded by a symphony of creation; galaxies are everywhere! I hope that everyone in the world can see them. “
Engineering images of sharply focused stars in the field of view of each instrument show that the telescope is fully aligned and in focus. For this test, Webb pointed to part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy in the Milky Way that provides a dense field of hundreds of thousands of stars through all of the observatory’s sensors. The dimensions and positions of the images shown here depict the relative position of each of the Web instruments in the focal plane of the telescope, each pointing to a slightly offset part of the sky relative to each other. The three Webb imaging tools are NIRCam (images shown here with a wavelength of 2 microns), NIRISS (image shown here with 1.5 microns) and MIRI (shown at 7.7 microns, longer wavelengths) revealing interstellar cloud radiation as well as starlight). NIRSpec is a spectrograph rather than an imaging device, but can make images, such as the 1.1 micron image shown here, for calibration and target acquisition. The dark areas visible in parts of NIRSpec’s data are due to the structures of its micro-shutter array, which has several hundred thousand controllable shutters that can be opened or closed to choose which light is sent to the spectrograph. Finally, Webb’s fine-tuning sensor tracks the leading stars to guide the observatory accurately and precisely; both of its sensors are not typically used for scientific images, but can produce calibration images such as those shown here. This image data is used not only to assess image sharpness, but also to accurately measure and calibrate fine image distortion and sensor alignment as part of the overall Webb instrument calibration process. Credit: NASA / STScI
The Webb team will now turn its attention to the commissioning of scientific tools. Each instrument is an extremely sophisticated set of detectors equipped with unique lenses, masks, filters and personalized equipment that helps it perform the science it is designed to achieve. The specialized features of these tools will be configured and operated in various combinations during the commissioning phase to fully confirm their readiness for science. With the official completion of the telescope alignment, key personnel involved in the commissioning of each instrument arrived at the Mission Operations Center at the Baltimore Space Telescope Science Institute, and some telescope alignment staff have completed their duties.
Although the alignment of the telescope has been completed, some telescope calibration activities remain: As part of the commissioning of the scientific instrument, the telescope will be instructed to point to different areas of the sky where the total amount of solar radiation entering the observatory will vary. to confirm the thermal stability when changing targets. In addition, ongoing maintenance observations every two days will monitor the alignment of the mirrors and, where necessary, apply adjustments to keep the mirrors in place.
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