One week after activating your cameras NIRCam and start aligning your mirrors, the James Webb telescope recorded his first images of stars. The photos are not intended to study any star or galaxy, but to test the functioning of the cameras and identify the lights of the same star in each of the 18 mirrors.
James Webb and constellation Ursa Major
The test image was taken pointing at a star, known as HD 84406, in the constellation Ursa Major. The star was chosen because it is easy to identify and is more “lonely” in its position, avoiding the interference of light from other stars. The photo is a mosaic of the light rays from HD 84406, now the telescope James Webb will use the mosaic as a guide to correctly align the mirrors. Once this is done, the 18 images of the mosaic will merge into a single image of the star.
THE NASA also released a selfie of James Webb. To make this capture, the telescope used the primary mirror, located in the middle. The shining mirror is the only one fully aligned with the star HD 84406. The prediction is that the first useful images of the James Webb are caught in the middle of the year.
Source: Disclosure/NASA.
James Webb: Years from Production to Release
the project of James Webb telescope was developed by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in conjunction with the European and Canadian space agencies. Initially, it was scheduled to be launched in 2007. But some problems delayed the launch of the model, one of them was the high production cost of the James Webb telescope, which was increasing more and more, and, still in 2005, made the engineers rethink the original design.
In 2016 the telescope was declared ready, but again its project was put on hold due to construction complications and stayed that way until 2019, when it was finally assembled. However, due to the pandemic caused by COVID-19, more delays happened until the NASA finally set December 18, 2021 for release.
Through it, researchers will be able to observe even more things from space, being able to see some of the oldest galaxies in the universe and other celestial bodies, such as black holes.
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