How we sharpened the James Webb Telescope's vision from a million km away
a day ago
- #Space Technology
- #Astronomy
- #James Webb Space Telescope
- NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched in 2021 after navigating 344 potential failure points.
- Webb’s first images revealed the most distant galaxies, but work was just beginning for the Australian team using its AMI mode.
- AMI, an Australian-designed aperture masking interferometer, enhances Webb’s resolution by filtering light through a metal plate.
- Webb’s initial images showed slight blurriness due to electronic effects, which the team corrected using a computer model and machine learning.
- The correction allowed AMI to clearly observe faint planets, brown dwarfs, and other celestial objects like Jupiter’s moon Io and black hole jets.
- The team’s work demonstrates the potential for future telescopes to detect Earth-like planets by correcting optical and electronic distortions.