Thursday 17 March 2022
In a huge milestone, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has finally been aligned to produce the first unified image of a single star. Most traditional telescopes these days (like the one you might have in your backyard) have a single primary mirror that collects distant light from stars. But the JWST has 18 mirrors! These had to be aligned extremely precisely to capture the image NASA released today. This gif shows several intermediary images of stars used for the crucial JWST mirror alignment process. GIF: NASA/Twitter The challenge with JWST The JWST is the largest telescope humans have ever…
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