Washington, March 16 (BUS): NASA’s new space telescope peered into the distant universe and showed a perfect view: a spiky image of a distant star blown up by thousands of ancient galaxies, AP reports.
The image released Wednesday from the James Webb Space Telescope is a test shot — not an official scientific observation — of how its 18 hexagonal mirrors worked together to create a single coordinated image taken 1 million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth. Officials said it worked better than expected.
Last month, NASA looked at a much closer star with 19 separate mirror clips images.
The scientists said they felt dizzy when they saw the latest test images arriving. NASA’s test image was targeting a star a hundred times fainter than the human eye can see – 2,000 light-years away. The area of a light year is about 6 trillion miles (9.7 trillion km).
The look of Webb’s mirrors and filters made the twinkling star look even more red and spiky, but the background really stole the show.