We're just weeks away from getting official scientific data from the space telescope as final equipment tests wrap up.
“Astronomers are a quantitative bunch,” says Pontoppidan. “They want more than pretty images, they want to be able to actually make quantitative measurements.”
The new phase involves confirming each of the instrument’s functions, assessing their performance, and calibrating their systems to ensure essential operation sequences can be followed all the way through. This stage is crucial to make sure all future data collection runs smoothly. “Everybody wants to get to the science as quickly as possible, but we do have to make sure that the instruments actually are able to deliver that science,” Pontoppidan says.
Some of the evaluations on the JWST’s checklist include a moving target test which will be used to track an asteroid through space, and making sure it can recognize the signatures of planets beyond our solar system, or exoplanets. Another test will involve pointing the telescope at different portions of the sky, specifically the Large Magellanic Cloud, to measure and then correct any optical distortions its instruments might have.
These are the preliminary test results of the Large Magellanic cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The sizes and positions of the images shown here depict the relative arrangement of each of the instruments in the telescope’s focal plane, each pointing at a slightly offset part of the sky relative to one another.
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