The James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror is made up of 18 hexagonal segments. Now that the telescope is in space, mission managers need to perfectly align them so the segments work as one giant mirror.
NASA/Chris Gunn

詹姆斯·韋伯太空望遠鏡（James Webb Space Telescope, 簡稱JWST）的主鏡由18面鏡片組成。望遠鏡已經(jīng)在太空中，任務(wù)管理人員需要將它們完美地對齊，這樣各個部分就可以像一面巨大的鏡子一樣工作。
NASA(美國國家航空航天局, National Aeronautics and Space Administration，簡稱NASA)/Chris Gunn

The powerful new James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first starlight, a milestone for the $10 billion space observatory — but it's not yet sending home the kind of breathtaking vistas of the cosmos that astronomers hope to unveil this summer.

功能強大的新型詹姆斯·韋伯太空望遠鏡捕捉到了它的第一道星光，這是耗資100億美元的航天天文臺的一個里程碑——但它還沒有把天文學(xué)家希望在今年夏天揭開的令人驚嘆的宇宙景象發(fā)送回來。

That's because the telescope's 18 gold-coated, hexagonal mirror segments aren't yet perfectly aligned and are basically acting like separate telescopes.

這是因為該望遠鏡的18個鍍金六邊形鏡片尚未完全對齊，他們基本上就像單獨的望遠鏡。

When astronomers point the observatory at a bright single star, the mirror segments each capture a different vision of that one celestial obxt, and the images are all out of focus and distorted.

當天文學(xué)家將天文臺指向一顆明亮的恒星時，每個鏡片都捕捉到了該天體的不同景象，圖像都失去了焦點并發(fā)生了扭曲。

One mosaic released by NASA, for example, looks like just a dark sky speckled with 18 little dots. Each dot is a different view of the same star, and each is labeled with the name of the mirror segment that captured it.

例如，美國國家航空航天局發(fā)布的一幅馬賽克看起來就像是一片黑暗的天空，上面點綴著18個小點。每個點都是同一顆星的不同觀測視角(的觀測結(jié)果)，并且標有捕捉到它的鏡片的名稱。

Images like these are incredibly important as mission managers start to carefully adjust the position of each mirror segment to get them working as one giant mirror that's 21 feet across.

隨著任務(wù)管理人員開始仔細調(diào)整每個鏡片的位置，使其成為一個21英尺寬的巨型鏡像，這樣的圖像變得極為重要。

"This amazing telescope has not only spread its wings, but it has now opened its eyes," says Lee Feinberg, Webb's optical telescope element manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who adds that all the initial results match their simulations and expectations. "It is still early, but we are very encouraged with what we are seeing."

李?費恩伯格( Lee Feinberg)是位于格林貝爾特的NASA戈達德太空飛行中心(NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, 簡稱GSFC)的主管，他說，“這臺令人驚嘆的望遠鏡不僅展開了翅膀，而且現(xiàn)在已經(jīng)睜開了眼睛?！彼a充道，所有的初步結(jié)果都符合他們的模擬和預(yù)期。“雖然現(xiàn)在還為時過早，但是對于看到的結(jié)果，我們受到了非常大的鼓舞?！?/b>


This mosaic shows images of the same star. Each is labeled with the name of the mirror segment that captured it. "Wing" refers to the two sides of the mirror assembly that unfolded in space.
NASA

這種馬賽克展示了同一顆恒星的圖像。每個觀測結(jié)果附近標明了觀測到該結(jié)果的鏡片名稱。“Wing” 指的是鏡片在太空中展開的兩側(cè)。

NASA
So far there's no sign of any major flaw, like the one that troubled the Hubble Space Telescope before astronauts went up and fixed it. But Feinberg cautions that there's still plenty of work ahead. He thinks they won't know for sure that everything is OK until some fine-tuning that should occur in March.

迄今為止，還沒有出現(xiàn)任何重大缺陷的跡象，比如之前宇航員上去修復(fù)困擾哈勃望遠鏡(Hubble Space Telescope, 位于地球的大氣層之上的一個光學(xué)望遠鏡, 簡稱HST)的那個。但是費恩伯格提醒說道，將來仍然有大量的工作需要完成。他認為在3月份進行精確調(diào)整之前，他們無法確定是否一切正常。

The first light came into the telescope's main imager, a near infrared camera called NIRCam, early on the morning on Feb. 2. Scientists gathered at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore to watch and cheer.

2月2日清晨，第一束光進入了韋伯望遠鏡的主成像儀——一個名為NIRCam的近紅外相機?？茖W(xué)家們聚集在巴爾的摩（Baltimore，美國馬里蘭州北部海港）的太空望遠鏡科學(xué)研究所（Space Telescope Science Institute, 簡稱STScI）觀看并歡呼。

"The excitement of finally getting some light through the telescope onto NIRCam's detectors was really hard to express," says Marcia Rieke, principal investigator for NIRCam and regents' professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who has dedicated about 20 years of her life to this project. "This place was a giant celebration because the light had made it and we were super-duper happy."

Marcia Rieke是NIRCam的項目負責(zé)人，同時也是圖桑市亞利桑那大學(xué)(University of Arizona)的天文學(xué)教授，她將生命中將近20年的光陰奉獻給了這個項目。她說?！白罱K，一些光線投射到了NIRCam的探測器上，這種興奮難以言表。這些光的出現(xiàn)使得我們非常欣喜，讓太空望遠鏡科學(xué)研究所成為了盛大的慶典?！?/b>

The very first images were just a quick engineering check to make sure that nothing was blocking the path of light into the detector. "We got beautiful — at least beautiful to a person who has worked on NIRCam for a long time — images," says Rieke.

最初的圖像只是一個快速的工程檢查，以確保沒有任何東西阻擋進入探測器的光路?！拔覀兊玫搅嗣利惖某上瘛辽賹τ谠贜IRCam上長時間工作的人來說?！?Rieke說道。

"After all these years, to actually see data when we are in zero gravity, in space, it is emotional," says Feinberg. "In the room, when we were looking at the data, people were really excited. But, you know, we still are being a little cautious because we still have things that we have to get through."

“在這么多年之后，當我們在太空的失重環(huán)境下真切地看到數(shù)據(jù)時，我們歡忻鼓舞。房間里，人們看著數(shù)據(jù)，群情鼎沸。但是你知道的，我們?nèi)匀挥悬c謹慎，因為我們?nèi)匀挥幸恍┦虑樾枰鉀Q。”費恩伯格說道。

Nonetheless, Feinberg recalls that when he went home a few days after seeing those initial images, his wife said it was the first time she had seen him smiling since December. "We're all feeling energized by all this," he says.

盡管如此，費恩伯格回憶起他在觀測到首批圖像的幾天后回到家，妻子說那是她從12月以來第一次看到他臉上出現(xiàn)微笑?！斑@一切讓我們都感到精力充沛。”

The James Webb Space Telescope, which launched on Christmas Day, has been in the works for decades and was so over budget and so delayed that at one point, lawmakers in Congress tried to kill it. The telescope is so big that it had to be folded up to fit inside a rocket and then it unfurled itself out in space. The three-story-tall observatory is now parked in a special orbit around the sun that keeps it about a million miles away from Earth.

在圣誕節(jié)發(fā)射的詹姆斯·韋伯太空望遠鏡已經(jīng)投入使用了幾十年，由于預(yù)算過多，時間延誤，國會議員一度試圖扼殺它。韋伯望遠鏡太大了，必須折疊起來才能裝進火箭，然后才能在太空中展開。這座三層樓高的天文臺現(xiàn)在停在一個繞太陽運行的特殊軌道上，使它與地球保持約100萬英里的距離。

Once it is fully operational, this telescope should be able to capture faint infrared light that has been traveling through space for almost the entire history of the universe, revealing what the first galaxies looked like after the Big Bang. It will also allow astronomers to probe the composition of the atmospheres of planets that orbit other stars, searching for combinations of gases that might indicate the possible presence of life.

一旦完全投入使用，這臺望遠鏡應(yīng)該能夠捕捉到幾乎在整個宇宙歷史中一直在太空中傳播的微弱紅外光，揭示出宇宙大爆炸后第一批星系的樣子。天文學(xué)家也將能夠探測環(huán)繞其他恒星運行的行星大氣的組成，尋找可能表明生命存在的氣體組合。

Marshall Perrin, Webb deputy telescope scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, says that the mirrors' separate depictions of a single star showed up pretty close together in images taken with the camera, suggesting that the mirrors are already aligned reasonably well.

韋伯太空望遠鏡科學(xué)研究所副望遠鏡科學(xué)家Marshall Perrin說在相機拍攝的圖像中，不同鏡片對單一恒星的獨立成像非常接近，這表明鏡片已經(jīng)很好地對齊了。

"It's a real testament to the care and the precision with which the observatory was put together on the ground and with how smoothly the ride to space went and all those deployments," says Perrin. "And that has put us in a great starting position to begin aligning these mirrors to act as one."

Perrin 說，“這不僅證明了該天文臺在地面組裝和部署時的穩(wěn)定性和精確性，也表明其將來可以順利前往太空部署的可行性。并且，這讓我們處于一個很好的起點，開始對齊這些鏡片，使得他們合而為一?！?br />