Skip to main content

James Webb begins aligning 3 of its instruments

The James Webb Space Telescope recently hit a big milestone when engineers completed the alignment of its mirrors. But there is still a lot to do before the telescope is ready to begin science operations this summer. With the mirrors aligned with Webb’s instruments, NIRCam, now the team needs to work on aligning the other three instruments, and it recently began to do that with a process called multi-instrument multi-field (MIMF) alignment.

The six-week MIMF alignment process will align the three instruments plus Webb’s guidance system, called the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS). This process is necessary to allow Webb to switch seamlessly between its different instruments. All the cameras observe at the same time, so if researchers want to look at a particular target like a star using different instruments, the telescope needs to be repointed to move the target into the field of view of the new instrument.

Recommended Videos

NASA scientists have shared more about how the MIMF alignment works in a blog post. “After MIMF, Webb’s telescope will provide a good focus and sharp images in all the instruments. In addition, we need to precisely know the relative positions of all the fields of view,” wrote Jonathan Gardner, Webb deputy senior project scientist, and Stefanie Milam, Webb deputy project scientist for planetary science, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

“Over last weekend, we mapped the positions of the three near-infrared instruments relative to the guider and updated their positions in the software that we use to point the telescope. In another instrument milestone, FGS recently achieved ‘fine guide’ mode for the first time, locking onto a guide star using its highest precision level. We have also been taking ‘dark’ images, to measure the baseline detector response when no light reaches them – an important part of the instrument calibration.”

The next instruments to be aligned will be the Near-Infrared Spectrograph and the Near InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, which along with NIRCam are the three near-infrared instruments. The final instrument, the Mid-Infrared Instrument or MIRI, will be the last to be aligned as it still needs to be cooled down to its operating temperature, which is an almost unfathomably chilly seven degrees above absolute zero.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
James Webb is explaining the puzzle of some of the earliest galaxies
This image shows a small portion of the field observed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) for the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey. It is filled with galaxies. The light from some of them has traveled for over 13 billion years to reach the telescope.

From practically the moment it was turned on, the James Webb Space Telescope has been shaking cosmology. In some of its very earliest observations, the telescope was able to look back at some of the earliest galaxies ever observed, and it found something odd: These galaxies were much brighter than anyone had predicted. Even when the telescope's instruments were carefully calibrated over the few weeks after beginning operations, the discrepancy remained. It seemed like the early universe was a much busier, brighter place than expected, and no one knew why.

This wasn't a minor issue. The fact early galaxies appeared to be bigger or brighter than model predicted meant that something was off about the way we understood the early universe. The findings were even considered "universe breaking." Now, though, new research suggests that the universe isn't broken -- it's just that there were early black holes playing tricks.

Read more
James Webb Telescope captures gorgeous galaxy with a hungry monster at its heart
Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is Messier 106, also known as NGC 4258. This is a nearby spiral galaxy that resides roughly 23 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, practically a neighbour by cosmic standards. Messier 106 is one of the brightest and nearest spiral galaxies to our own and two supernovae have been observed in this galaxy in 1981 and 2014.

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows off a nearby galaxy called Messier 106 -- a spiral galaxy that is particularly bright. At just 23 million light-years away (that's relatively close by galactic standards), this galaxy is of particular interest to astronomers due to its bustling central region, called an active galactic nucleus.

The high level of activity in this central region is thought to be due to the monster that lurks at the galaxy's heart. Like most galaxies including our own, Messier 106 has an enormous black hole called a supermassive black hole at its center. However, the supermassive black hole in Messier 106 is particularly active, gobbling up material like dust and gas from the surrounding area. In fact, this black hole eats so much matter that as it spins, it warps the disk of gas around it, which creates streamers of gas flying out from this central region.

Read more
Watch Sierra Space destroy its inflatable space station — again
Sierra Space's LIFE facility as it explodes in a pressure test.

Witnessing an explosion involving a carefully constructed piece of space kit doesn’t seem like a good thing, but engineers at Sierra Space was entirely happy to see the LIFE (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) habitat torn apart in a recent burst pressure test because it helped them learn more about its capabilities.

A video (below) shows the habitat explode when it can no longer handle the huge forces acting upon it.

Read more