NASA / ESA / CSA-ASC - James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) patch.
May 9, 2022
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is aligned across all four of its science instruments, as seen in a previous engineering image showing the observatory’s full field of view. Now, we take a closer look at that same image, focusing on Webb’s coldest instrument: the Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI.
Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech (left), NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI (right)
The MIRI test image (at 7.7 microns) shows part of the Large Magellanic Cloud. This small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way provided a dense star field to test Webb’s performance.
Here, a close-up of the MIRI image is compared to a past image of the same target taken with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope’s Infrared Array Camera (at 8.0 microns). The retired Spitzer telescope was one of NASA’s Great Observatories and the first to provide high-resolution images of the near- and mid-infrared universe. Webb, with its significantly larger primary mirror and improved detectors, will allow us to see the infrared sky with improved clarity, enabling even more discoveries.
Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech (top), NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI (bottom)
For example, Webb’s MIRI image shows the interstellar gas in unprecedented detail. Here, you can see the emission from “polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons,” or molecules of carbon and hydrogen that play an important role in the thermal balance and chemistry of interstellar gas. When Webb is ready to begin science observations, studies such as these with MIRI will help give astronomers new insights into the birth of stars and protoplanetary systems.
Animation Credits: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
In the meantime, the Webb team has begun the process of setting up and testing Webb’s instruments to begin science observations this summer. Today at 11 a.m., Webb experts will preview these next two months of instrument preparations in a teleconference for media. Listen to the audio stream live at https://www.nasa.gov/live.
About the Webb Telescope
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Animation Credits: NASA/ESA
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
Related link:
Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI: https://webb.nasa.gov/content/observatory/instruments/miri.html
Learn more about Webb at:
https://webb.nasa.gov/
https://www.nasa.gov/webb
https://webbtelescope.org/
https://stsci.edu/jwst (for astronomers)
Images (mentioned), Animations (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Alise Fisher.
Best regards, Orbiter.ch
