![]() ![]() Lastly, Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor tracks guide stars to point the observatory accurately and precisely its two sensors are not generally used for scientific imaging but can take calibration images such as those shown here. The dark regions visible in parts of the NIRSpec data are due to structures of its microshutter array, which has several hundred thousand controllable shutters that can be opened or shut to select which light is sent into the spectrograph. Webb’s three imaging instruments are NIRCam (images shown here at a wavelength of 2 microns), NIRISS (image shown here at 1.5 microns), and MIRI (shown at 7.7 microns, a longer wavelength revealing emission from interstellar clouds as well as starlight).ĮSA's NIRSpec is a spectrograph rather than imager but can take images, such as the 1.1 micron image shown here, for calibrations and target acquisition. The sizes and positions of the images shown here depict the relative arrangement of each of Webb’s instruments in the telescope’s focal plane, each pointing at a slightly offset part of the sky relative to one another. For this test, Webb pointed at part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, providing a dense field of hundreds of thousands of stars across all the observatory’s sensors. The alignment of the telescope across all of Webb’s instruments can be seen in a series of images that captures the observatory’s full field of view.Įngineering images of sharply focused stars in the field of view of each instrument demonstrate that the telescope is fully aligned and in focus. This process of setting up and testing the instruments will take about two months before scientific operations begin in the summer. Upon completing the seventh and final stage of telescope alignment, the team held a set of key decision meetings and unanimously agreed that Webb is ready to move forward into its next and final series of preparations, known as science instrument commissioning. After full review, the observatory has been confirmed to be capable of capturing crisp, well-focused images with each of its four powerful onboard science instruments. Alignment of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is now complete. ![]()
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