In the process of aligning the 18 hexagonal mirrors of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA engineers took a selfie of the telescope
is going hybrid, with a live in-person event in Manchester, UK, that you can also enjoy from the comfort of your own home,The calibration of the mirrors is one of the most important tasks for the telescope, as they all have to be perfectly aligned if it is going to take clear images. The telescope has now taken two images to help with that process.
The first, pictured at the start of this article, is a “selfie” of the mirrors themselves. In this image, one of the segments appears much brighter than the others, which is because it is pointed directly at a bright star, while the others aren’t yet in the same alignment.The second image, pictured directly above, shows a star called HD 84406 in the constellation Ursa Major, also known as the Big Dipper.
This allows the telescope to add the light reflected by all the segments together so that it can spot fainter and more distant objects. “This is a great starting point for mirror alignment,” said JWST scientist Marshall Perrin at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland.
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