The James Webb Space Telescope has transmitted its first pictures back from its interstellar mission, NASA announced Friday, giving the world a glimpse of starlight almost two months after it was first deployed.
The telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) snapped shots of starlight through its mirror segments starting Feb. 2, which reflected the starlight into its secondary mirror and the camera’s detectors. The process, which lasted just over a day and produced 54 gigabytes of raw data, allowed NASA to develop a mosaic image with 18 shots of a single star—as well as a selfie of the telescope’s mirror system.
“The entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding. We were so happy to see that light makes its way into NIRCam,” said Marcia Rieke, a University of Arizona professor and the principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument, in a statement. The group hopes to develop the mirror segments over the next month so that the 18 glimpses will produce a single composite image of a star.
NASA said the telescope’s images will only become clearer and more detailed as time progresses, with the most scientific images expected in the summer. The telescope was deployed last Christmas with the goal of exploring exoplanets to determine whether they support life.
