Dikhyaa Mohanty 
NASA has unveiled the first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which represents the early stages of the telescope’s 18 main mirror segments properly aligning. This image mosaic was created by pointing the telescope at a bright, isolated star in the constellation Ursa Major known as HD 84406.
According to the reports, this star was chosen specifically because it is easily identifiable and not crowded by other stars of similar brightness, which helps to reduce background confusion. Each dot within the mosaic is labelled by the corresponding primary mirror segment that captured it.
What looks like a simple image of blurry starlight now becomes the foundation to align and focus the telescope in order for Webb to deliver unprecedented views of the universe this summer. Over the next month or so, the team will gradually adjust the mirror segments until the 18 images become a single star.
Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for the NIRCam instrument and regents professor of astronomy, University of Arizona stated that the entire Webb team is ecstatic at how well the first steps of taking images and aligning the telescope are proceeding. We were so happy to see that light makes its way into NIRCam.
These images were then stitched together to produce a single, large mosaic that captures the signature of each primary mirror segment in one frame. The $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope will explore every phase of cosmic history — from within our solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe.
