If the phrase "My god, it's full of stars" was ever appropriate, it was due to these new images from the James Webb Space Telescope. These are engineering images, mind you, but they are amazing. The number of stars and the clarity in the fields of view are amazing.
The images were taken after the telescope's mirror segments were fully focused. The four science instruments will take about two months to commission. The observatory will be ready to begin its science observations in this final phase.
The team says the optical performance is better than the most optimistic predictions.
These test images from a successfully aligned telescope demonstrate what people across countries and continents can achieve when there is a bold scientific vision to explore the universe.
Each instrument is successfully capturing images with the light being delivered to them because of the alignment of the telescope's 18 mirror segments. The teams said that the image quality delivered to all instruments is limited by the size of the telescope, meaning that the detail that can be seen is as good as possible.
These images are just a taste of what is to come with JWST. The images are similar to the Hubble Deep Field images, but even deeper.
The way I see the universe has been profoundly changed by these images. It is my hope that everyone can see them.
The sharpness and clarity of the observations remains even when you zoom in. The images are explained by NASA.
Engineering images of stars in the field of view show that the telescope is in focus. A dense field of hundreds of thousands of stars was provided by part of the Large Magellanic Cloud for this test. The sizes and positions of the images show the relative arrangement of the instruments in the telescope, each pointing at a slightly offset part of the sky. The three instruments that are part of the program are NIRCam, NIRISS, and MIRI, all of which show emission from clouds as well as starlight. The 1.1 micron image shown here is a NIRSpec image, which can be used for target acquisition and calibrations. The dark regions in parts of the NIRSpec data are due to the structures of the microshutter array, which have hundreds of thousand of shutters that can be opened or shut to pick which light is sent into the spectrograph. The Fine Guidance Sensor tracks guide stars to point the observatory accurately and precisely, and can take calibration images. This image data is used to measure and calibrate subtle image distortions and alignments between sensors as part of the overall instrument calibration process. The credit is NASA/STScI.
Engineers will need to make small adjustments to the mirror segments during the lifetime of the mission as the mirror is now fully in focus. The alignment can be altered by small changes in temperature or movement of the spacecraft.
Feinberg told me earlier this year that they would check the alignment every two weeks. We have the ability to do it more frequently, but we may not need to do it every 2 weeks. We want to learn how frequently we have to update the mirror.
You can keep track of the instrument commissioning phase at the Where.
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