On Wednesday night, NASA released a "test" image from the James Webb Space Telescope that suggests the upcoming science images and data will be spectacular.
Releasing the test photo to the public, which NASA says is "among the deepest images of the Universe ever taken," appears to be flexible almost because it's a very well-engineered image.
The space agency took the image in late May during a weeklong stability test of the telescope meant to demonstrate the capabilities of the Fine Guidance Sensor it uses. This instrument helps the James Webb Space Telescope find and lock onto astronomical targets and was built by the Canadian Space Agency.
"The resulting test image has some coarse properties," NASA said in a statement Press release.
“It's not optimized to make scientific observations. Instead, the data was taken to test how well the telescope could stay locked on a target, to find out the power of the telescope. However, the image has some characteristics from the images sent by Webb. The bright stars are distinguished by their six long, sharply defined diffraction peaks – a phenomenon due to the six-sided sections of the Webb mirror. Beyond the stars, galaxies fill almost the entire background.”
As we had says an earlier publication, the first scientific images of the universe as we've never seen it before will be released publicly in five days, starting at 14:30 UTC (5:30 PM Greek Time).
