NASA releases the first images captured by the ‘James Webb’ Space Telescope

The United States Aerospace Agency (NASA), released this Sunday the first images captured by the new ‘James Webb’ space telescope, which is about to complete the first phase of the alignment of its main mirror, a process that will last months. Even so, NASA has already published a image mosaic of 18 starlight points randomly arranged, and that will serve as a reference to align and focus the telescope.

The telescope was released on December 25, 2021 aboard an Ariane rocket from the European spaceport of Kourou in French Guiana. Is he successor of the telescope Hubble, which has been in use for more than 30 years.

Over the next month, the team will gradually adjust the mirror segments until the 18 images become a single starlocated in the constellation Ursa Major, known as HD 84406.

“Getting that much data right on day one has required all scientific operations and Webb’s data processing systems here on Earth they will work without problemsMarshall Perrin, deputy scientist at the Webb telescope and astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, explained to the NASA website.

In this sense, it should be noted that the images that NASA has published are only a central part of that larger mosaic, a Huge image with over 2 billion pixels.

Scientists hope that the images captured by the telescope will provide information about the universe shortly after the Big Bangabout 13.8 billion years ago.