전원 켜짐! Webb 우주 망원경은 기기를 켭니다.

이제 18개의 미러 세그먼트를 모두 정렬하여 하나처럼 작동하도록 하는 프로세스를 시작합니다.

의 도착 이후[{” attribute=””>NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope at its orbital destination January 24, the mission operations team has successfully powered on all of the telescope’s science instruments, including its primary camera, the Near Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, built by a team of researchers and engineers led by University of Arizona astronomer Marcia Rieke.

Turning the instruments on is the first in a series of critical steps that also includes turning off heaters to begin a long cool-down process for the instruments and aligning the telescope’s mirrors over a period of months.

Launched on December 25, Webb is NASA’s top science priority, and UArizona astronomers played key roles in designing and developing the telescope’s infrared eyes. NIRCam and MIRI, which stands for Mid-Infrared Instrument, will allow Webb to peer deeper into the cosmos than ever before and collect light from the earliest stars, galaxies, nebulous stellar nurseries, planetary atmospheres, and more.

The James Webb Space Telescope has reached it’s parking spot in space and has successfully powered up all of it’s instruments. Within the week, the UArizona-led NIRCam will be used to align the 18 gold-plated mirror segments to work together as one giant mirror.. Credit: NASA GSFC/CIL/Adriana Manrique Gutierrez

Marcia Rieke, a University of Arizona Regents Professor of Astronomy, is principal investigator for NIRCam. Her husband, George Rieke, also a Regents Professor of Astronomy, is the science team lead for MIRI.

While MIRI and some components of the telescope’s other instruments were powered on in the weeks after Webb’s December 25 launch, the final three instruments – including NIRCam – turned on in the past few days.

After the powered-on instruments undergo initial checks, the mission operations team’s next major step is to turn off instrument heaters. The heaters keep critical optics warm to protect them from water and ice condensation. As the instruments meet predefined criteria for overall temperatures, the team will shut off the heaters to allow the instruments to cool to final temperatures that will allow the infrared detectors to see faint objects in the night sky.

A sensor array for the NIRCam instrument, designed and tested by Marcia Rieke’s research group at Steward Observatory. For the sensors to detect infrared light without too much noise in the data, Webb and its instruments must be kept as cool as possible. Credit: Marcia Rieke

When NIRCam reaches about minus 244 degrees Fahrenheit, likely later this week, Webb’s optics team will be ready to begin meticulously aligning the telescope’s 18 primary mirror segments to work together as a single mirror surface. NASA is targeting star HD84406 to begin this process. It will be the first object NIRCam sees when photons of light hit the instrument’s powered-on detectors. However, it won’t be the first image that is shared with the public. That object has not been chosen yet, and NASA will likely release the image this summer.

NIRCam was assigned the task of aligning the telescope because it was built to observe shorter wavelengths of light than the other onboard instruments. Because of this, it can discern the most detail and is the most sensitive to misalignment.

“These first photos mean that we finally get starlight moving through the system and detected by NIRCam,” Marcia Rieke said. “NIRCam has not been turned on since before launch; this will prove the launch didn’t introduce issues for how it can work.”

18개의 미러 세그먼트가 아직 함께 작동하지 않기 때문에 정렬 프로세스는 먼저 망원경이 별 HD84406을 가리킬 때 18개의 임의의 흐릿한 빛 점의 이미지를 생성합니다.

거울 정렬의 처음 몇 주 동안 팀은 Webb의 거울 부분을 미세하게 조정하면서 NIRCam이 별에 대해 훈련하도록 할 것입니다. 궁극적으로 그 18개의 흐릿한 점들의 집합은 하나의 별에 초점을 맞춘 이미지가 될 것입니다.

망원경과 장비의 냉각은 다음 달에도 계속될 것이며 NIRCam은 궁극적으로 화씨 영하 400도에 도달할 것입니다.

NASA는 Webb의 총 관측 시간 중 13%를 UArizona 천문학자들에게 할당했습니다. 이것은 대학에 세계의 다른 천문학 센터보다 더 많은 시청 시간을 제공합니다. 국립과학재단(National Science Foundation)은 애리조나 대학교를 1위에 랭크했습니다. 1988년부터 매년 천체물리학 및 천체물리학 연구비 1위