(ORDO NEWS) — Last week, the operators of the James Webb Orbiting Telescope released the first official images of distant universe objects such as galaxies and nebulae.
However, the telescope also photographed a much closer object – Jupiter, its three satellites, as well as the rings of the giant planet.
Photographs of the largest planet in the solar system were taken during the commissioning of the space telescope – James Webb engineers calibrated and tested the operation of four scientific instruments and other systems of the observatory.
The telescope was put into operation earlier this week, and on Tuesday, July 12, the first photo taken by James Webb was shown , which marked the beginning of the observatory’s scientific work.
The pictures were taken with a NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) camera, the filters were changed. Jupiter itself is visible in the first image with a 2.12 micron filter. The second was made with a 3.23 micron filter.
In addition to Europe, the pictures show the rings and two more moons of Jupiter: Metis and Thebe.
The scientists themselves were eager to admire the photographs – they confirm that the James Webb can also be used to observe objects located very close by. And if you’re lucky, you’ll see signs of eruptions in Europe or Saturn’s Enceladus.
NASA also recalled that James Webb can track the movement of objects – the development requirement was the ability to track moving bodies at an angular velocity of up to 30 milliseconds of arc per second (msd / s).
This function was also tested during the calibration of the system: the object was the asteroid 6481 Tenzing from the belt of Mars and Jupiter.
It turned out that the telescope copes with objects whose angular velocity is up to 67 msd / s – twice as fast.
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