NASA's James Webb Space Telescope snapped in its orbit 15 lakh kms away from Earth

The Rome-based Virtual Telescope Project has released a picture of the James Webb Space Telescope among the stars after the latter just arrived at its destination on Monday, January 25. According to project manager Gianluca Masi's report, Webb was imaged just when it entered its orbit at the second Lagrange point after travelling 1.5 million kilometres after its launch on December 25. 

"The image above comes from a single 300-second exposure, unfiltered, remotely collected with the “Elena” robotic unit available at the Virtual Telescope Project. Our robotic telescope tracked the apparent motion of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which is marked by an arrow in the center", Masi said in a statement. The image above shows the telescope embedded in the darkness, barely visible between the brightness of other stars. 

James Webb Space Telescope enters commissioning phase

Jointly developed by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb telescope has now entered the commissioning phase which would last five months. Amber Straughn, the deputy project scientist for Webb science communications informed as per Space.com that they are expecting the first images from Webb to arrive in five months. Before that happens, the Webb team will work to align the telescope's golden mirrors into position and activate and test the instruments before they are used for making observations. 

On January 25, Webb entered its orbit at the second Lagrange point, a location that has been chosen for its gravitational stability and to save the telescope's instruments from the Sun's heat. Built at a cost of $10 billion, Webb has been touted as the successor of NASA-ESA's Hubble Space Telescope which will follow up on the findings of the latter. Scientists also say that it is the most powerful telescope ever built and has the highest level of sensitivity to the infrared wavelength of light. The telescope, in the simplest of terms, is a time machine that would peer 13 billion years ago to answer questions about the origins of the universe. 

Image: Twitter/@VirtualTelescop