![]() But the pictures themselves are real and reliable, even though it takes some artistry to translate the telescope’s infrared data into colorful visible light ( SN: 3/17/18, p. The raw numbers that scientists have pulled out of some of the initial images may end up being revised slightly. ![]() “We knew calibration issues were going to happen,” Mowla says. The JWST team is providing calibration information so researchers can properly analyze the data. Data from the telescope had been in such high demand that the operators hadn’t yet calibrated all the detectors before releasing data. That need for testing plus the excitement has led to some confusion for astronomers in these heady early days. “It will take some time before we can characterize all the different observation modes of all four instruments that are on board.” “It is a very, very new instrument,” says Lamiya Mowla, an astronomer at the University of Toronto. JWST spent its first several months collecting “early-release” science data, observations that test the different ways the telescope can see. And because it looks in much longer wavelengths of light, JWST can observe distant and veiled objects that were previously hidden. It’s bigger and more sensitive than its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. The telescope, also known as JWST, was designed to see further back into the history of the cosmos than ever before ( SN: 10/9/21 & 10/23/21, p.
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