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KOMPAS.com – Main mirror telescope outer space James Webb fully aligned and performs better than designed. For the first time, this telescope has succeeded in targeting cosmic objects in the sky universe.
This 6.5 meter wide mirror consists of 18 hexagonal segments. Aligning them into one smooth reflecting surface has been one of the main tasks the Webb control team has had to tackle since the launch on December 25 last year.
The alignment process, which involves adjusting the position and tilt of 18 segments with nanometer-scale precision, has been completed.
However, even though the process isn’t finished yet, the mission telescope James Webb worth 10 billion is the most complex and most expensive observatory ever launched.
In addition, the James Webb telescope has succeeded in producing images that have astounded scientists.
“The telescope’s performance so far is everything we dared hope for,” said project scientist Webb at the Goddard Space Flight Center NASA in Maryland Jane Rigby as quoted from SpaceThursday (17/3/2022).
Also read: James Webb Space Telescope Successfully Orbit Near The Sun
He added that the images that the James Webb telescope has captured so far are as sharp as the Hubble telescope can take, but are at wavelengths that are completely invisible to the Hubble telescope.
“So this makes the visible universe turn very focused, very sharp,” Rigby said.
The process of aligning the mirrors of the James Webb telescope
When the mirror alignment process began in early January, the ground team pointed the telescope at HD 84406. At the start of the alignment process, the telescope sent 18 images of the stars, with each main mirror segment acting as its own telescope.
This image, released on March 16, 2022, shows a bright yellow star emitting a stream of light across the universe.
However, what’s more interesting lies in the background, which shows dozens of dots and dots, each galaxy unreachable before.
These distant galaxies made the first pictures taken by space telescope James Webb referred to this as the inner field. Such photographs, focusing on a small part of the sky, aim to capture the most distant objects in the universe.
Also read: James Webb Telescope Successfully Photographed Its First Star, What’s It Like?
Telescope Hubble, Webb’s predecessor, specialized in the interior. Webb is set to beat Hubble in his ability to peer into the depths.
Randy Kimble, NASA’s Webb project scientist for integration, testing, and commissioning, said that it took the Hubble space telescope weeks to get some of its best deep-field images, James Webb Space Telescope will achieve the same result in a few hours.
However, the two observatories do not depict the universe in the same wavelength, with the Hubble telescope expert in visible and ultraviolet radiation while Webb is in the infrared field.
Furthermore, the Webb telescope is designed to be up to 100 times more sensitive than Hubble, and that goal has not only been achieved but has been exceeded.
“We said last fall that it would be known that the telescope was working properly when we had images of stars that looked like (real) stars,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb’s optical telescope elements manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Currently, he continued, the image has been seen. The telescope actually works really well. No other telescope has previously been launched into space with a collapsible mirror.
Also read: The James Webb telescope has successfully opened a giant golden mirror in outer space
The engineering team at NASA and its partner organizations had to develop a completely new technology, never before flown in space. As a result, the James Webb space telescope project faced many delays and cost overruns.
In early January, the telescope installed a tennis court-sized sun visor in an equally seamless process. Mirror alignment is carried out with the help of the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), one of Webb’s four scientific instruments.
In addition to aligning the mirrors, the scientists had to wait for the instrument to cool down to a frigid temperature close to absolute zero.
Due to Space Telescope James Webb is an infrared telescope (and infrared light is basically heat), any warmth emitted by his telescope and instruments would dazzle detectors and make it impossible to see the most distant objects in the universe.
With all its equipment deployed, aligned, and cooled, the James Webb telescope would be able to see the first stars to appear in the nascent universe just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
Currently, the control team will focus on the telescope’s four science instruments, with the first scientific images expected to be released in June or July.
Also read: Can the James Webb Space Telescope Detect Alien Life?
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