“Better than our most optimistic prediction” – first images from James Webb

[Gortex]

With every step completed were another step closer to an exciting new age of discovery , as a taster for that new age NASA have released the first (non scientific) image from Webb following it's successful main mirror alignment over the past few weeks.

The picture shows a Star situated some 258.5 light-years away from Earth that was chosen as the calibration target because it was unremarkable but the image of it returned by Webb has astronomers jumping for joy , not only does it show Webb is working but the image also shows many other Galaxies.

In a virtual briefing, NASA officials expressed their overwhelming joy and relief at what these first images represent.

“We said last fall that we would know that the telescope is working properly when we have an image of a star that looks like a star,” says Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “Now you’re seeing that image. And I’m happy to say that the optical performance of the telescope is absolutely phenomenal, it is really working extremely well. The performance is as good if not better than our most optimistic prediction.”
https://cosmosmagazine.com/space/exploration/first-photos-james-webb-telescope/

There are still a few weeks to wait yet but if that's the quality of the engineering images I really can't wait for the scientific images.