Please look at the first photo taken by James Webb Space Telescope.

They are not the most amazing pictures of the universe, but they mark a huge scientific milestone.

The wait is finally over.

On February 1 1, the team behind NASA's James Webb Space Telescope released the first images taken by the highly anticipated observatory.

This main picture shows a star named HD 84406. This photo doesn't even hint at the power that Weber will bring to the universe when he is fully operational. This is only a part of the mosaic taken within 25 hours from February 2, when the segmented mirrors of the Observatory were being aligned.

"The entire Webber team was ecstatic because the first step of taking images and aiming at the telescope went so smoothly," Marcia Rick said.

The first photo taken by James Webb Space Telescope shows a part of a mosaic, which started on February 2, 2022 and lasted for 25 hours in the process of aiming at the mirror 18 of James Webb Space Telescope.

In the first month, the telescope was launched from the launching state and traveled a long way to a place nearly 6.5438+0.5 million kilometers away from the earth.

For most of the rest of the time, scientists are focusing on awakening and calibrating the instruments of the Observatory and fine-tuning the telescope's 65,438+08 gold mirror, which is necessary for clearly shooting images of the deep space universe.

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), this process is progressing smoothly.

"Getting so much data on the first day requires all Weber's scientific operations and data processing systems on earth to cooperate smoothly with the observatory in space from the beginning. In the previous search, we found that all 18 parts of light are very close to the center! This is a good starting point for mirror alignment. "

The annotation of the first image of James Webb Space Telescope marks which lenses captured which views of the star HD 84406.

However, as today's high-definition 84406 image shows, the telescope still has a long way to go.

"The first batch of images will be ugly," said Jane rigby, a scientist of Weber's operation project, at a news conference held on June 8, 65438/KLOC-0, when the telescope began to disassemble the mirror.

"The weather will become very fuzzy. We will have a small picture like 18 flying all over the sky. "

This photo does show multiple perspectives of HD 84406. JWST scientists recently announced that they chose to observe this star first.

NASA official 65438+1October 28th wrote on Twitter: "Starlight, bright star ... The first star that Webber will see is HD 84406, which is a sun-like star, about 260 light years away."

HD 84406 is located in Ursa Major, but it can't be seen from the earth without a telescope.

But for Weber, this is a perfect early target, because its brightness is stable and the observatory can always find it, so the delay of launch or deployment will not affect the plan.

Strangely, jwst will not be able to observe HD 84406 at the end of his term; Once the telescope is focused, the star will become too bright to observe.

Previously, JWST staff had said that by the end of April, the telescope would see a very clear image.

When JWST tried to hone his vision, the second key process was going on backstage, because the observatory was sending the waste heat from the earth into space.

Because Weber studies the universe with infrared rays, which are also recorded as heat, the observatory must be very cold to obtain accurate data.

Team members said, "After so many years, it is exciting to really see these data when we are in zero gravity in space. What I want to say is that people are really excited when we look at the data in the room. "

However, "we are still a little cautious because we still have a lot of things to do ... but I will definitely say that when I came home on Saturday night, that is, two days later (after the photo was taken), I knew that my wife told me that this was the first time she had seen me smile since 65438+ February last year."

Palin said: "When we look at the data, only a few images spread within a few hours at a time and spread all day, and we begin to see the bright spots we are looking for."

He added that when it all started to come together, "it was an amazing moment. Everyone in the room shed tears and was full of excitement. "

Go ahead, get up.

In addition to the mosaic, NASA also released an annotated version of this photo and a "self-portrait" of Weber's iconic gold mirror taken by NIRCam.

Weber will continue to aim at and focus on its mirror image, so that as a whole, they can focus on distant cosmic objects.

However, don't worry, because Weber's other scientific instruments are still cooling down, because it is still too hot to go online.

Palin said the team expected that the preliminary comparison of Weber's lenses would take about a month to complete.