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IN THE SPOTLIGHTS
NEWS BY NASA
MIRI’s Sharper View
The new James Webb Space Telescope is now aligned across all four of its science
instruments 1 . A test image of the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) shows the promising
performance of the Webb telescope.
In Figure 1 a comparison between images of the same part of
the Large Magellanic Cloud taken by the retired Spizer Space
Telescope and by MIRI. The latter shows the interstellar gas in
unprecedented details. You can see the emission from “polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons,” or molecules of carbon and hydrogen
that play an important role in the thermal balance and chemistry of
interstellar gas. When Webb is ready to begin science observations,
studies such as these with MIRI will give new insights into the birth
of stars and protoplanetary systems. n
1
https://www.jwst.nasa.gov
. FIG. 1: Infrared image of part of the Large Magellanic by the James Webb Space
Telescope (right, NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI) compared to that by the Spitzer Space Telescope
(left, NASA/JPL-Caltech).
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