James Webb is Well Focused!

[Disaffected]

https://www.universetoday.com/155013/webb-has-now-taken-the-sharpest-image-the-laws-of-physics-allow/

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. My Son The Astronomer is giddy with delight.

As, apparently, are all astronomers.

[renate]

3. OMG your son's an astronomer?!?!?!?!?!

Literally my dream job! Good for him!

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Yes, he is. He's actually in a PhD program

at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, just outside Washington DC. His research is on exo planets.

One of his formal degree requirements is to get three professional articles published. One has already been accepted, he's nearly done with the rewrite, he's drafting the second, will start the third when number two is finished, and he's fine-tuning his research.

Apparently there are plenty of good jobs in his field. Plus, of course, he makes lots of contacts at various conferences he goes to. In the summer of 2019 there was one just for people doing his specific kind of exo planet research (radial velocity, here's a link to how it's done: https://www.planetary.org/articles/color-shifting-stars-the-radial-velocity-method) in Switzerland. Maybe 125 people altogether, so essentially they all know each other.

I constantly call him up with random astronomy questions, and he's always good at explaining things to me.

[rurallib]

2. oh boy!!!!

[USALiberal]

4. Here's three paragraphs.......

Engineers and scientists for the James Webb Space Telescope have completed two more steps in the telescope’s primary mirror alignment process, and in a briefing today, officials said JWST’s optical performance appears to be better than even the most optimistic predictions.

The team released a new engineering image, showing the star 2MASS J17554042+6551277 in crisp clarity. This image demonstrates that all 18 mirror segments have been precisely aligned to act as one giant, high-precision 6.5-meter (21.3-foot) primary telescope mirror.

“We now have achieved what’s called ‘diffraction limited alignment’ of the telescope,” said Marshall Perrin, deputy project scientist for Webb at the Space Telescope Science Institute. “The mirrors are focused together as finely as the laws of physics allow, and this is the sharpest image you can get from a telescope of this size.”



More at link!

[Trailrider1951]

6. Take a close look at that image

All those fuzzy "stars" surrounding the bright star are actually galaxies.

[USALiberal]

7. So cool!

[Disaffected]

8. That's what I find really mind-blowing about such images.

Similar to the Hubble deep space, long exposures - peer at a tiny area of the cosmos for many days and come up with an image with thousands of objects in it which are almost all galaxies.

And some of the galaxies in the Webb image have never been seen before, even by Hubble.