18 eyes are better than one. JWST sends back first infocus picture and its breathtaking

[Master Disaster]

After a month of calibration and alignment (down to the micron) JWST has just wowed everyone by beaming back its first infocus image and in the process has exceeded our best case estimates of its capabilities.

 

Quote

The American space agency has achieved a major milestone in its preparation of the new James Webb Space Telescope.

 

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.

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.

 

"You not only see the star and the spikes from the diffraction of the star, but you see other stars in the field that are tightly focused, just like we expect, and all sorts of other interesting structure in the background," he told reporters.

"We've actually done very detailed analysis of the images we're getting, and, so far, what we're finding is that the performance is as good if not better than our most optimistic prediction."

I'll add this just because its pretty crazy

Quote

"We now have achieved what's called 'diffraction limited alignment' of the telescope: The images are focused together as finely as the laws of physics allow," said Marshall Perrin who works on Webb at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.

Source - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-60771210

For a better explanation from someone who really understands...

 

My thoughts

 

That is one hella sexy image. The detail is something else and you can still clearly see other stars really close to the focal point. Incredible.

[Commodus]

I'm really eager to see the first images going back to the early universe. We've been partly limited by the tech of older telescopes like Hubble — we might get a much better look at the earliest galaxies.

[porina]

This should give some context to how it compares to existing optical imaging.

[Master Disaster]

1 minute ago, Commodus said:

I'm really eager to see the first images going back to the early universe. We've been partly limited by the tech of older telescopes like Hubble — we might get a much better look at the earliest galaxies.

They had Spitzer, JWST is ~20x the resolution

[tikker]

It's so great to see it all work out smoothly so far. JWST will for sure deliver some great science once it becomes fully operational. This will provide a huge advantage over the usual unresolved blobs that IR is for anything not nearby. Time to go bother some of my colleagues about when their first images will come in.

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

They had Spitzer, JWST is ~20x the resolution

Much more detailed wavelength coverage as well. Spitzer's imaging went up to ~24 microns wherewas JWST can do a whole slew between ~5 and ~25 microns. The fun part is that the actual cutting edge science will still likely be the "boring" unresolved stuff after all the obvious low-hanging fruit has been picked :P

 

It's actually pretty close to ALMA resolution as well, which I suspect will be a powerful combination.

 

[Edit] the NASA source might be nice to add: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-webb-reaches-alignment-milestone-optics-working-successfully

[TetraSky]

Well, look at that... a newer camera capable of a higher resolution gives better pictures, who knew.

[tikker]

30 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

Well, look at that... a camera capable of a higher resolution gives better pictures, who knew.

Well yeah that's how physics works, bigger mirror = higher resolution. You can say this "whoopdeedoo" about every piece of tech that comes out from OLED HDR performance to next gen GPUs being better. What makes this different?

 

The resolution in and of itself isn't that special. Hubble can already reach about half JWST's resolution (as in about twice worse) and we have ground-based facilities that far exceed its resolution capabilities at optical and other wavelengths. It's the fact that it is in this mid-infrared wavelength regime that makes it scientifically new and valuable.That, and we're just celebrating remote deployment of an intricate instrument floating 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth going as smoothly as it can.

[poochyena]

I saw this short video earlier today explaining the process very well

 

 

[Arika]

i made the mistake of trying to fathom just how large space is when looking at the image and seeing how many many other GALAXY's are shown....and now i'm having an existential crisis.

[tikker]

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

i made the mistake of trying to fathom just how large space is when looking at the image and seeing how many many other GALAXY's are shown....and now i'm having an existential crisis.

Don't make the mistake of then considering that the area of the picture is only ~32 full Moons worth of sky area out of the order 100,000 Moons of area cross the entire sky.

[Rauten]

Is there any way to get a version of that image without the text? It would make for a pretty nifty desktop background! I've tried looking around the NASA site, but can't find any other version of the picture.

 

5 hours ago, Arika S said:

i made the mistake of trying to fathom just how large space is when looking at the image and seeing how many many other GALAXY's are shown....and now i'm having an existential crisis.

I recommend watching Kurzgesagt to help your crisis.

No, not to help with your crisis; to help your crisis.

[Arika]

15 minutes ago, tikker said:

Don't make the mistake of then considering that the area of the picture is only ~32 full Moons worth of sky area out of the order 100,000 Moons of area cross the entire sky.

D:

 

 

8 minutes ago, Rauten said:

 

I recommend watching Kurzgesagt to help your crisis.

No, not to help with your crisis; to help your crisis.

D:

[Commodus]

2 hours ago, Rauten said:

Is there any way to get a version of that image without the text? It would make for a pretty nifty desktop background! I've tried looking around the NASA site, but can't find any other version of the picture.

 

I recommend watching Kurzgesagt to help your crisis.

No, not to help with your crisis; to help your crisis.

It's the only version NASA has made available (I've checked). You'd have to crop out or erase the text yourself.

[CarlBar]

10 hours ago, Arika S said:

i made the mistake of trying to fathom just how large space is when looking at the image and seeing how many many other GALAXY's are shown....and now i'm having an existential crisis.

 

Watch this starting at 52:50, the streamers an astronomy buff and goes off on a tangent about the famous Hubble Deep Field image after somthing in the game he was streaming prompts him.

 

 

 

 

[Forbidden Wafer]

5 hours ago, Rauten said:

I recommend watching Kurzgesagt 

Ew, Kurzgesagt...

[Master Disaster]

47 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

Ew, Kurzgesagt...

Yep, total clickbait and sometimes flat out lies.

54 minutes ago, CarlBar said:

 

Watch this starting at 52:50, the streamers an astronomy buff and goes off on a tangent about the famous Hubble Deep Field image after somthing in the game he was streaming prompts him.

You should clarify, he is a microbiologist who's side passion is astronomy and streams under the name CarlSagan42 because Carl Sagan is his hero, NSFW warning though, he swears a LOT!!!!

 

TBF, if I lived in Arizona then I'd swear a lot too. I can never understand why anyone would choose to live in a desert?

[tikker]

1 hour ago, CarlBar said:

Watch this starting at 52:50, the streamers an astronomy buff and goes off on a tangent about the famous Hubble Deep Field image after somthing in the game he was streaming prompts him.

The HDF (and it's varieties) will be forever special. All of these famous fields will be obseved quickly as for astronomers it's an obvious and most scientifically rewarding thing to do due to all the other data available. From what I can gather JWST already has well over a hundred hours of guaranteed time on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field in the first cycle so I'm sure we'll see something of that 'soon' once it commences actual science operation.

[Cyberspirit]

16 hours ago, Arika S said:

i made the mistake of trying to fathom just how large space is when looking at the image and seeing how many many other GALAXY's are shown....and now i'm having an existential crisis.

If it makes you feel any better, there's a chance that one of the many might have cat girls in them.

[tikker]

To put in pictures rather than words just how much of an improvement this is over existing IR and optical instruments:

 

[CarlBar]

13 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

You should clarify, he is a microbiologist who's side passion is astronomy and streams under the name CarlSagan42 because Carl Sagan is his hero, NSFW warning though, he swears a LOT!!!!

 

TBF, if I lived in Arizona then I'd swear a lot too. I can never understand why anyone would choose to live in a desert?

Fair i went straight to bed more or less after posting that. Brain was a tad fried.

[Moonzy]

I have several questions:

1) is the center of the image always gonna be that bright? Does it function by slightly offset your target to the side to get a photo of it?

Or is just too sensitive for the star used for calibration and the thing they wanna film is actually much much dimmer?

 

2) why is only some of the spots affected by artifacts from the hexagon shaped mirror while others aren't affected?

 

3) what am I having for dinner tonight?

[Master Disaster]

8 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

I have several questions:

1) is the center of the image always gonna be that bright? Does it function by slightly offset your target to the side to get a photo of it?

Or is just too sensitive for the star used for calibration and the thing they wanna film is actually much much dimmer?

The star in the image is MUCH closer than the stuff they want to study. It was chosen because its a random star in the right part of the sky that gives the telescope the best possible chance of alignment. Otherwise its unremarkable,

8 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

 

2) why is only some of the spots affected by artifacts from the hexagon shaped mirror while others aren't affected?

Pass. Best guess is there was simply too much light for the sensor.

8 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

 

3) what am I having for dinner tonight?

Can't go wrong with Pizza.

[Moonzy]

5 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

The star in the image is MUCH closer than the stuff they want to study. It was chosen because its a random star in the right part of the sky that gives the telescope the best possible chance of alignment.

If that's the case, how would they know if it's actually in focus because it's just a big blob of bright in the middle of the image

 

5 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Pizza

No good Pizza nearby, unfortunately

[coreygibson]

47 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

If that's the case, how would they know if it's actually in focus because it's just a big blob of bright in the middle of the image

 

Looking at the lines coming out from the star it looks like they are using a bahtinov mask. Not sure though. they could be doing it the old fashioned way and adjust the focus back and forth until the star gets the smallest size in the camera.

[CarlBar]

56 minutes ago, coreygibson said:

Looking at the lines coming out from the star it looks like they are using a bahtinov mask. Not sure though. they could be doing it the old fashioned way and adjust the focus back and forth until the star gets the smallest size in the camera.

 

Definitely not the later. The mirrors can take days to shift fully from one extreme to the other. Also yeah, the thing they're looking at in the image is less than 2,000 light years away. It's intended to look back around 13,000,000,000 Light Years. Thats a distance six and a half million times further away. It's the equivalent of holding the camera from a spy satellite up in your hand and taking a selfie with it in terms of difference in distance sale.