Webb continues on its path to becoming a focused observatory. The team has successfully worked through the second and third out of seven total phases of mirror alignment. With the completion of these phases, called Segment Alignment and Image Stacking, the team will now begin making smaller adjustments to the positions of Webb’s mirrors.
After moving what were 18 scattered dots of starlight into Webb’s signature hexagonal formation, the team refined each mirror segment’s image by making minor adjustments, while also changing the alignment of Webb’s secondary mirror. The completion of this process, known as Segment Alignment, was a key step prior to overlapping the light from all the mirrors so that they can work in unison.
Once Segment Alignment was achieved, the focused dots reflected by each mirror were then stacked on top of each other, delivering photons of light from each segment to the same location on NIRCam’s sensor. During this process, called Image Stacking, the team activated sets of six mirrors at a time and commanded them to repoint their light to overlap, until all dots of starlight overlapped with each other.
“We still have work to do, but we are increasingly pleased with the results we’re seeing,” said Lee Feinberg, optical telescope element manager for Webb at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Years of planning and testing are paying dividends, and the team could not be more excited to see what the next few weeks and months bring.”
Although Image Stacking put all the light from a star in one place on NIRCam’s detector, the mirror segments are still acting as 18 small telescopes rather than one big one. The segments now need to be lined up to each other with an accuracy smaller than the wavelength of the light.
The team is now starting the fourth phase of mirror alignment, known as Coarse Phasing, where NIRCam is used to capture light spectra from 20 separate pairings of mirror segments. This helps the team identify and correct vertical displacement between the mirror segments, or small differences in their heights. This will make the single dot of starlight progressively sharper and more focused in the coming weeks.
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6 Comments
Is it possible that the magnification and point focusing of even distant star light will be too hot on what is supposed to be an extremely cold environment of the telescope.
No, the heat represented by the infrared light landing on the sensor will be exactly what is needed to produce an image within the sensor’s dynamic operational range. In the case of an infrared sensor, it is heat, itself, that is being observed.
Very Good.
Very Interesting.
Here is a Thought on the day before Shivraatri , a festival widely celebreated in India.
Once we have the Light from Distant Objects, thanks to the 18 Telescopes {(Looks like to reach the Son of Lord Shiva, we have to climb the eighteen steps0, before reaching the abode of Lord Ayyapa}. how about splitting the same with a Prism to see the spectrum which constitues that object!
From that spectrum a great deal of information can be gleaned about the object of interest.
Views expressed are personal and not binding on anyone.
The mumbo-jumbo shiva babble aside, yeah, splitting the light in to the constituent spectrum is one of the very basic things an observatory is capable of doing. The NIRSpec instrument on the JWST is designed exactly for this.
keep up the excellent work gals and guys!
your average working person who desperately needs more cosmology,
rd
Infrared light. The Red Kachina, The Red Dragon, Nibiru, The great Destroyer, Wormwood….Father has returned. Soon everything will be right as rain.