James Webb First Images Released

Last week, NASA announced that James Webb Space Telescope had detected the first light in its sensors. Today, NASA has released the first photo taken, as well as a delightful selfie that the telescope took of its famously shaped primary mirror.

Image of HD 84406 taken by JWST. Each point of light is the same star, just taken by mirror segments at different angles. Credit: NASA

“Star light, star bright…the first star Webb will see is HD 84406, a Sun-like star about 260 light years away. While it will be too bright for Webb to study once the telescope is in focus, it’s a perfect target for Webb to gather engineering data & start mirror alignment.” — NASAWebb on Twitter

As discussed in my article here, JWST’s first image is not pretty. Webb has 18 mirror segments that captured the first image of star HD 84406 as 18 separate points of light that will have to be focused. NASA previously announced that each of these points would first be identified to their corresponding mirror segments, and then they would align them all straight and facing forward, after which they will begin aligning them in sections.

Simulated example of a possible initial deployment showing 18 segment images. Credit: NASA

Simulation of image stacking. First panel: Initial image mosaic. Second panel: A-segments stacked. Third panel: A- and B-segments stacked. Fourth panel: A-, B-, and C-segments stacked. Credit: NASA

“The first images are going to be…