James Webb Fully Aligned, Ready for Instrument Testing

Yesterday, April 28th, 2022, NASA announced the completion of the seventh and final stage of the James Webb Space Telescope’s alignment. This also comes with the confirmation that Webb is capable of capturing crisp, well-focused images with all four of its onboard instruments. The Webb team will now enter the final phase of preparation, known as science commissioning. This final phase will take around two months. After this, Webb will begin scientific operations.

Images taken by all four of JWST’s instruments of stars in a part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy near the Milky Way. The sizes and positions of the images shown here depict the relative arrangement of each of Webb’s instruments in the telescope’s focal plane, each pointing at a slightly offset part of the sky relative to one another. Credit: NASA/STScI

NASA states that the telescope’s performance is constantly proving itself to be better than predicted. They say that the image quality delivered to all four instruments is “diffraction-limited.” This means that the level of detail the images have is the best quality physically possible for the size of the telescope.

“These remarkable test images from a successfully aligned telescope demonstrate what people across countries and continents can achieve when there is a bold scientific vision to explore the universe,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Now that the telescope is fully aligned, only small adjustments will need to be made to the primary mirror segments occasionally as Webb operates. Ongoing maintenance observations will be performed every two days to monitor the mirrors…