James Webb: 'Fully focused' telescope beats expectations
Source: BBC
Engineers say they have now managed to fully focus the $10bn observatory on a test star. The pin-sharp performance is even better than hoped, they add.
To get to this stage, all of Webb's mirrors had to be aligned to tiny fractions of the width of a human hair.
But the agency cautions that a lot of work still lies ahead before the telescope can be declared operational.
Lee Feinberg, the Nasa engineer who has led the development of Webb's optical elements, described the release of the first properly focused image as phenomenal.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60771210
ffr
(22,649 posts)TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY. TY.
Mr. Evil
(2,749 posts)See wut humans can doo wit a gud ejumacation?
calimary
(80,700 posts)THIS is how humanity is uplifted. A welcome contrast to what's going on overseas.
Orrex
(63,086 posts)Sometimes one is almost tempted to have hope for the future of the species.
LudwigPastorius
(8,944 posts)"We were going to transmit how to cure all disease, make unlimited clean energy, and how to travel to other worlds instantly...
...but, you just won't stop killing each other, so NOPE."
Delphinus
(11,808 posts)Agreed we couldn't bring ourselves to live up to that.
mitch96
(13,821 posts)lostnfound
(16,138 posts)Is it over 13 billion years?
lastlib
(22,981 posts)A single star that far away, even with JWST's resolution would be little more than a pixel. A wild guess would be that it was one a few hundred or thousand LYs away.
LudwigPastorius
(8,944 posts)2,000 light years away...
PatrickforB
(14,516 posts)thenelm1
(843 posts)To much continued success. I've kind of been on pins and needles about this project particularly after the teething problems they had back in the day with Hubble. (And ultimately Hubble was an amazing, eye opening and awe inspiring success.) If anything of consequence had gone wrong, I can't begin to imagine the negative pushback that would have come from the science averse troglodytes, those in Congress particularly. Knock on wood, the success continues. This ride is and should be awe inspiring.
burrowowl
(17,607 posts)Human beings have better things to do besides war!
Historic NY
(37,449 posts)Ptah
(32,983 posts)Jack-o-Lantern
(965 posts)(fill in the blank).
eppur_se_muova
(36,227 posts)The mirror array has sixfold symmetry, and the secondary support threefold, so the diffraction spikes should have sixfold symmetry as well. Those two extra spikes seem to indicate some kind of two- or four-fold irregularity.
ETA: Oh wait, the support doesn't appear to be threefold symmetric after all. There are three support legs, but not evenly spaced. I suppose that's it. Curious they didn't go with other designs.
tonekat
(1,805 posts)Explained all that today on a forum he and I are in. I'm still trying to make sense of it as I am not in that field.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)They are on Phase 4 of 7. Aligning all those big mirror segments (even slightly bending them to perfection) within nanometers is an incredibly tedious and complex task. Then they can start calibrating the instruments.
If you see videos touting things that James Webb has "discovered" they are total clickbait bullshit. It will be summer before Webb can actually do science.
Track the deployment progress live, here:
electric_blue68
(14,623 posts)roamer65
(36,739 posts)I want to go to that bright one in the upper left hand corner.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)LiberatedUSA
(1,666 posts)And if the planet gets nuked, the next civilization will see this ancient machine floating there as proof we tried to do something great; assuming they can progress from Stone Age 2 to Space Age 2.