Produced by: Mohsin Shaikh
The US$10 billion James Webb Space Telescope was launched in December 2021, marking the biggest leap in telescope technology since Hubble.
Webb orbits 1.5 million km from Earth, making it impossible to service physically, unlike Hubble which required astronauts for repairs.
The telescope carries Australia’s only hardware, the Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI), designed by astronomer Peter Tuthill to enhance image resolution.
AMI filters light through a structured pattern of holes, enabling detection and correction of nanometre-level distortions across Webb’s 18 hexagonal primary mirrors.
Initial images showed subtle blurring from electronic effects, where bright pixels leaked into darker neighbours, limiting Webb’s ability to detect faint planets near stars.
Scientists built a computer model and machine learning algorithm to simulate AMI optics and detector behavior, restoring full function by correcting blurs during data processing.
The correction revealed HD 206893’s faint planet and the reddest-known brown dwarf, objects previously undetectable with Webb’s raw data.
AMI now resolves intricate targets like Jupiter’s moon Io’s volcanoes, black hole jets in NGC 1068, and dust ribbons around WR 137 with unmatched precision.
This optical and electronic calibration framework sets the stage for Webb and future telescopes, like the Roman Space Telescope, to discover Earth-like planets in distant galaxies.