The James Webb Space Telescope is working as well as astronomers dreamed it would

As part of the evaluation process, this image of a star was taken as the mirror segments were carefully aligned.

NASA/STScI

A supersharp image of a bright star released by NASA shows that the telescope's optics seem to be working well.

Astronomers were thrilled when the $10 billion telescope unfolded itself out of space after decades of development and construction.

Scientists say that the mirror segments have been aligned so that they can act as a giant mirror.

When the first images came down, it was a very emotional moment, says Lee Feinberg, the optical telescope element manager at NASA. It is working very well.

Astronomers aim the telescope at bright stars during the alignment process. The segments would act like individual telescopes, with each returning a separate image of the same star.

18 hexagonal mirror segments are used in the primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope is in the sky.

Chris Gunn/NASA

The mirror segments can work together now. The results are what the astronomer hoped for.

Marshall Perrin, an astronomer with the Space Telescope Science, says that as we were focusing on those bright stars, we couldn't help but see the rest of the universe coming into focus behind them.

There is no way to not be excited about the scientific possibilities that are opening up here.

The telescope needs to be set up to work with all of its different instruments before it can do science.

It will be able to gather light this summer that will show how some of the first galaxies looked a couple of hundred million years after the Big bang. The telescope will be used to look for signs of life in the atmospheres of planets that are outside of our solar system.