1st images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope just released

[Judi Lynn]

By Meghan Bartels published about 8 hours ago

The space images mark a huge milestone.

The wait is finally over.

The team behind NASA's James Webb Space Telescope released some of the first images from the much-anticipated observatory on Friday (Feb. 11). The main photo, which doesn't even hint at the power Webb will bring to the universe once it's fully operational, shows a star called HD 84406 and is only a portion of the mosaic taken over 25 hours beginning on Feb. 2, during the ongoing process to align the observatory's segmented mirror.

"The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding," Marcia Rieke, principal investigator of the instrument that Webb relies on for the alignment procedure and an astronomer at the University of Arizona, said in a NASA statement.

JWST is now 48 days out from its Christmas Day launch and in the midst of a commissioning process expected to last about six months. The telescope spent the first month unfolding from its launch configuration and trekking out nearly 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth.

During the bulk of the remaining time, scientists are focusing on waking and calibrating the observatory's instruments and making the minute adjustments to the telescope's 18 golden mirror segments that are necessary for crisp, clear images of the deep universe.

More:
https://www.livescience.com/james-webb-space-telescope-first-photos-unveiled?utm_source=notification

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. Thank you for that.

Alas, My Son The Astronomer did not tell me about this. He's in deep doo-doo over this.

He's working on his PhD and researching exoplanets, but he pays plenty of attention to many other aspects of astronomy.

[PuppyBismark]

2. Link to video that explains the Image from The Webb Telescope web site

Here is the video that explains the image from the Webb telescope:

Here is a link to the Webb Telescope web that is very up-to-date:

https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

[MontanaMama]

3. Bookmarking to watch the video in the morning.

LOVE your username.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thank you for posting the video and the great link. ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐A

[Judi Lynn]

4. NASA reveals first images from its new X-ray mission

Jasmine Hicks - Yesterday 1:35 PM

On Monday, NASA released the first science images from its new Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE. A look at the Cassiopeia A supernova — the bright remnants of a star that exploded in space in the 17th century — the image provides a first glimpse of what the space agency’s new X-ray mission will teach us about some of the most extreme events in the cosmos, like supernova explosions and cosmic collisions.

Launched in early December, IXPE is NASA’s first mission dedicated to studying X-ray polarization, or X-ray light whose vibrations are all aligned in a single direction. The explorer builds on the work of the Chandra X-ray Observatory by using polarization to help explain exactly where the X-ray light produced from space events comes from.

The first image presented by NASA shows X-ray emissions of various intensities IXPE mapped across the supernova in mid-January. Researchers will study the data to create a first-of-its-kind X-ray polarization map of Cassiopeia A, which will provide insights into X-ray production at Cassiopeia A.

“IXPE’s future polarization images should unveil the mechanisms at the heart of this famous cosmic accelerator,” Roger Romani, an IXPE co-investigator, said in a press release. “To fill in some of those details, we’ve developed a way to make IXPE’s measurements even more precise using machine learning techniques. We’re looking forward to what we’ll find as we analyze all the data.”

More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/nasa-reveals-first-images-from-its-new-x-ray-mission/ar-AATTGIC?li=BBnb7Kz