James Webb telescope sends first images

NASA introduced First images from the James Webb Space Telescope located at the Lagrange point L2. In 25 hours, he captured 54GB of footage and created 1,560 images of the star HD 84406 in the constellation Ursa Major.

«James Webb"- a full-fledged orbital station weighing 6.2 tons, which will replace the Hubble telescope. It has been in development for about 25 years.

The project became the most expensive and large-scale in the history of space observations - about 10 billion US dollars were invested in it. The power of the new telescope is 100 times higher than that of the Hubble, thanks to new light sensitivity technologies.

The main task of James Webb is to detect the light of galaxies and stars that formed immediately after the Big Bang. Sending a telescope to the Lagrange point L2 allowed to increase its resolution by 7-10 times in order to obtain more accurate photographs.

The main mirror of the telescope has a diameter of 6.5 m and includes 18 hexagonal segments. As part of the observations, "James Webb" unfolded it in 156 different positions in the direction of the alleged location of the star HD 84406. The astronomers processed the reflections of light from the segments of the main mirror to the auxiliary mirror and to the NIRcam detectors and received the final images.

Also, as part of setting up all the systems, James Webb managed to take a selfie.

Experts stressed that the main mirror of the James Webb has not yet been calibrated. As part of this "photo shoot", the scientists wanted to test whether all of its segments could catch the light from one star. Engineers are now aligning the mirrors so that all images are aligned at the same point.