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We got together and looked at the very first de-fractional ...
images that came out of the Webb Telescope.
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And what we collective saw as a group is we have the highest ...
resloution infrared images taken from space ever.
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So, you think of it as a blub on a picture, you know, but ...
it is extremely high resloution.
We have exceeded every expectation.
The telescope performed better than the models said it should.
We even achieved, we talk about resolution and wavefront ...
quality, we've done better in those regards than we ...
thought we do, and we're just thrilled to death.
And to get there we went through a process.
Well, we did the segment identification, and then we ...
formed the image array.
And then once they were in the image array we used this ...
phase retrieval technology to position each of the ...
mirror segments and the secondary mirror itself, ...
such that, all the optical aberrations were effectively ...
eliminated.
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We tilt the mirror segments to bring the light from each ...
mirror so that it falls on top of each other at a ...
common point in the middle of the detector.
And we call that image staking.
And that concentrates all the light in a single place.
But the segments themselves are not cooperating, they're ...
not working together at that point.
They're all their own individual telescope.
And the next phase of the process is something we ...
call course phasing.
And that is where we adjust, literally its the piston, ...
its the up and down motion of the mirror segments relative ...
to each other.
We control the piston of the segments so that they all ...
come together in creating a complete monolithic ...
primary mirror.
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If you know exactly what the shape of that telescope ...
is, and you know exactly how the light is falling on your ...
detector, it turns out that you can prove, you can actually ...
prove mathematically that, that is enough information to ...
tell you exactly what you need to do to that telescope to ...
fix the alignment errors.
And why do we know this?
We know this because of something called the ...
pupil imaging lens.
And this allows us to take a picture of the ...
primary mirror of the telescope.
People refer to it as a selfie, well that’s what it is actually.
But that’s really important mathematically.
Now there is a catch however.
Just because you know a solution to something exist does not ...
automatically give you that solution.
And that is the difficult part.
That what we’ve spent 20 years working out.
Its highly mathematical, uses something Fourier analysis.
But that’s what we do, is we tease out those solutions, ...
and we find what we need to do to each optical element ...
to achieve perfection.
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We then turn to a different way of doing phase retrieval.
Across the entire aperture of the telescope at the ...
same time, and for that we’re not going to take the ...
telescope out of focus.
Instead we some lens that are in one of the ...
science instruments that we use to automatically to create a ...
defocused image.
And we look at these images, an taken as a whole, then ...
we can tell the last little bit of alignment errors in the ...
telescope that we need to fix.
And that is what we accomplished today.
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We analyzed those images and we applied the corrections ...
leading to the de-fractional imaging, the perfect ...
performance of the telescope.
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So there is only one thing left to do, and that’s to see how ...
well the telescope is aligned in the other science instruments.
And we’ll check the alignments there, and if necessary ...
we’ll apply a solution that optimizes for the ...
entire telescope.
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We then periodically measure the alignment of the telescope, ...
and made corrections as necessary.
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I cannot wait to see what it discovers.
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