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Two months later a dramatic christmas morning launch and a few rotations and openings lasting weeks, James Webb Space Telescope achieved what astronomers celebrate as “first light.”

In fact, it was the first lights.

NASA released 18 images of a star in the Ursa Major, known as HD 84406, seen from each of the 18 pieces that make up the telescope’s main mirror, recorded by Webb’s workhorse. Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Webb astronomers will spend the next few months shaking each of these mirror fragments back and forth until that star becomes one.

Marcia Rieke, professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona who led the team that founded NIRCam, described the Webb team as “ecstatic” in a news release from NASA.

The Webb telescope is a joint effort of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. 25 years and $10 billion under construction. name a former NASA administrator The spacecraft that guided the space agency in the early years of Apollo is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. It was designed to study the universe when it was only about 200 million years old and when the oldest stars and galaxies were just emerging from the foggy remnants of the Big Bang. It will also examine the secrets of black holes and examine exoplanets around nearby stars for signs of habitability or life.

For these purposes, their devices are designed to be sensitive to infrared or “heat” radiation. Because light waves from such distant objects are stretched in an expanding universe, they can be recorded at longer electromagnetic wavelengths than can only be seen by the human eye or normal sensors.

Webb is now parked About a million miles from Earthit orbits the sun around the sun behind a silvery foil heat shield that keeps the telescope cool enough to sense the distant heat from planets and galaxies.

As a “first light” bonus, a camera on the NIRCam took a photo of the mirror array itself—the closest look at the spacecraft shortly after it left Earth.

The first science results from the telescope are expected this summer, after all effort and focus has been completed. The universe must be prepared for its close-up.