James Webb, the most powerful space telescope in history, is moving further away from Earth.
James Webb Space Telescope observed from the ground. (Photo: Gianluca Masi).
The James Webb Space Telescope, the result of decades of development by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, was launched into space on December 25. Four days later, astrophysicist Gianluca Masi from the Virtual Telescope Project used a robotic telescope to observe Webb moving through space. Masi combined several images into a short video, where Webb appears as a small white dot in the sky.
Masi’s images show Webb traveling to its final destination, a gravitationally stable point in space known as Lagrange Point 2 (L2), located between Earth and the Sun, approximately 1.6 million kilometers from our planet. At the time of observation, Webb was flying about 550,000 kilometers from Earth, surpassing the Moon’s orbit by 160,000 kilometers.
To capture images of Webb, the robotic telescope tracked its movement across the sky. Masi collected images of Webb using a PlaneWave 17″+Paramount ME+SEBIG STL-6303E telescope with a 20-second exposure time. At the same moment Masi was observing, Webb had deployed its tower (DTA) to begin tensioning its massive sunshield, according to the Virtual Telescope Project.
