space
James Webb telescope captures extraordinary ‘radiant star’
Just a test photo, but a nice one: The star “2MASS J17554042+6551277”
© NASA / Picture Alliance
It’s just a test image to see if the space telescope’s 18 mirror elements are aligned correctly – but it already gives an impression of the special glimpses of space we’re about to get.
It’s an incredibly expensive and incredibly complicated project: The James Webb Space Telescope is to replace the 23-year-old Hubble Telescope and deliver even better images from space that can open up completely new discoveries. But a lot could have gone wrong – and the project would have failed. But after the launch of the telescope into space had already been successful, the technology now seems to be playing along as planned. In any case, the 18 mirror segments that are necessary for the function of the telescope work perfectly.
The scientists at NASA were convinced of this by shooting a first “finely tuned” test image with the James Webb telescope. And that shows the star “2MASS J17554042+6551277”, which is about 2000 light years from Earth and which would never have been visible to the human eye from Earth. Jane Rigby, one of the supervising scientists, was enthusiastic about the photo of the “bright” star: “Really beautiful!”. Other colleagues even got dizzy with joy about the successful picture.
James Webb Space Telescope works perfectly
With the 8.8 billion euro telescope, not only should numerous new stars and galaxies be discovered, but also more should be found out about the origin of our universe. Because with the better images that are now possible, the scientists can take a look into the depths of space, through which they may be able to find out more about the Big Bang than was possible with previous technical means. For example, the galaxies seen as bright points of light in the background of the “Radiant Star” photo are several billion years old! Now that many technical tests have been successfully completed, the James Webb telescope is scheduled to start regular operation in a few weeks – and not only science is eagerly awaiting what discoveries mankind will make with it.
Swell: NASA, “Mirror”, “World”