The Webb team continues to make progress in aligning the observatory’s mirrors. Engineers have completed the first stage in this process, called “Segment Image Identification.” The resulting image shows that the team has moved each of Webb’s 18 primary mirror segments to bring 18 unfocused copies of a single star into a planned hexagonal formation.
With the image array complete, the team has now begun the second phase of alignment: “Segment Alignment.” During this stage, the team will correct large positioning errors of the mirror segments and update the alignment of the secondary mirror, making each individual dot of starlight more focused. When this “global alignment” is complete, the team will begin the third phase, called “Image Stacking,” which will bring the 18 spots of light on top of each other.
“We steer the segment dots into this array so that they have the same relative locations as the physical mirrors,” said Matthew Lallo, systems scientist and Telescopes Branch manager at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “During global alignment and Image Stacking, this familiar arrangement gives the wavefront team an intuitive and natural way of visualizing changes in the segment spots in the context of the entire primary mirror. We can now actually watch the primary mirror slowly form into its precise, intended shape!”
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope uses a process called wavefront sensing and control to perfect its vision in orbit. This animation illustrates that process. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
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4 Comments
Combien de temps JWST sert le processus de détection et contrôle du front d’onde pour perfectionner sa vision en orbite et calculera t-il aussi pour déterminer la distance entre la position apparente et réelle des objets célestes ?
It looks to me like the timeline is mirror adjustments another 8 weeks, thereafter the 4 main instruments will do their own calibrations another couple of months [ https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html?units=metric ].
I don’t understand the last part which comes out in translation as “will it also calculate to determine the distance between the apparent and actual position of celestial objects?” The angular position is determined by the targeting mechanism and a knowledge of guide star angular positions which are determined from Earth (as they are virtually the same for objects at the distances involved, including most of the objects in our own systems Webb will sometimes target). The distances are determined by cosmological redshifts from spectra (or even coarse ones from photometry, I think) and a knowledge of the LCDM cosmology. I hope that was what you asked for, and that it helps!
I ca hardly wait till the Hexagon becomes a Triangle and finally a single image. That’s when things will get amazing, and we’ll start learning more about our universe (and our place in it).
If these photos belong to the public domain then why does your website disallow photo downloading? It’s not as if you are the original owner. So what gives?