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James Webb Space Telescope Sees First Light
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has made another major milestone, with instruments on-board detecting its first photons. The team will now spend the next several months calibrating each of the individual 18 mirror segments.
“This milestone marks the first of many steps to capture images that are at first unfocused and use them to slowly fine-tune the telescope. This is the very beginning of the process, but so far the initial results match expectations and simulations.” -NASA statement published Feb. 3rd, 2022.
It has been a long journey for JWST. It has now been 7 weeks since it was launched on Dec. 25th, Christmas Day 2021. During that time, Webb has opened its sunshield, prepared its mirrors, and arrived at its intended orbit around L2. This week's milestone has been beginning turning on equipment and beginning to calibrate the primary mirror.
Next Steps
With instruments working, the team behind JWST is now beginning the slow process of aligning each mirror segment to work as a whole, single mirror. As of now, the star JWST is observing will be visible to them as 18 different points of light until the mirror segments are aligned. The first step the team will have to take is determining which point of light corresponds to which segment.
