Nasa’s giant James Webb telescope spots its first star – and takes a selfie
- A key image showing 18 views of the same star will now help scientists align the 18 segments of the telescope’s golden mirror
- Nasa had previously said a selfie was not possible, but the team managed to obtain the ‘bonus’ photo using a special lens
Star light, star bright, the James Webb Space Telescope has seen its first star (though it wasn’t quite tonight) – and even taken a selfie, Nasa announced on Friday.
The steps are part of the months-long process of aligning the observatory’s enormous golden mirror, which astronomers hope will begin unravelling the mysteries of the early Universe by this summer.
The first picture sent back of the cosmos is far from stunning: 18 blurry white dots on a black background, all showing the same object: HD 84406 a bright, isolated star in the constellation Ursa Major.
But in fact it represents a major milestone. The 18 dots were captured by the primary mirror’s 18 individual segments – and the image is now the basis for aligning and focusing those hexagonal pieces.
The light bounced off the segments to Webb’s secondary mirror, a round object located at the end of long booms, and then to the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument – Webb’s main imaging device.
“The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding,” said Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument and regents professor of astronomy, University of Arizona, in a statement.
