The first major stage of aligning the primary mirror was finished by the James Webb Space Telescope.
The star that the observatory looked at was rendered 18 times into a hexagonal shape. Eventually, those 18 images will align into a single, sharp focus, but the interim result shows a star repeated perfectly in a hexagonal pattern reminiscent of a stunning meteorite.
The resulting image shows that the team has moved each of the 18 primary mirror segments to bring unfocused copies of a single star into a planned hexagonal formation.
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Matthew Lallo, systems scientist and telescopes branch manager at the Space Telescope Science Institute, said in the release that the star images are steered into this particular pattern so that they have the same relative locations as the physical mirrors.
The observatory will begin segment alignment, which will fix any larger positioning errors in the individual segments of the primary mirror and update the secondary mirror's alignment.
Once segment alignment is done, the team will start the third phase, which will eventually bring the 18 images on top of each other into one clear view.
The three-phase procedure will allow the team to experience an intuitive and natural way of seeing changes throughout the process. He said that we can now watch the primary mirror slowly form into its intended shape.
The main goal of the project is to align the mirrors. The mission was launched with an ambitious mission to look at the early universe, exoplanets and other points of interest.
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