The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has now completed the alignment of its mirror.
Telescope's teams have confirmed that Webb is now able to capture sharp and well-focused images.
“These remarkable 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,” said Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
The telescope's optical performance continues to be better than the engineering team's predictions. Webb's mirrors are now directing fully focused light collected from space towards the instruments that are successfully capturing images.
The image quality provided to all instruments is limited by diffraction, which means that the fineness of detail that can be seen is the best physically possible given the size of the telescope.
Although the telescope alignment is complete, some telescope calibration tasks remain. The telescope will be commanded to point to different areas of the sky where the total amount of solar radiation hitting the observatory will vary to confirm thermal stability when changing targets. Continuous maintenance observations, every two days, will monitor the alignment of the mirrors and apply corrections to keep the mirrors in their aligned positions if necessary.