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Astronomers showed off a comparison on Monday between one of Webb’s infrared test images of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, and the same view captured by NASA’s previous infrared observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope.

What looks like blurry orange and white blobs in the Spitzer image sharpen into distinct stars and whispy clouds of gas when viewed using Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI.

University of Arizona Regents professor of astronomy George Rieke helped design MIRI and now serves as science team lead for the instrument. His wife, fellow U of A regents astronomy professor Marcia Rieke, led the team that built Webb’s primary optical sensor, and she continues to serve as chief scientist for the device known as the Near Infrared Camera or NIRCam.

“It’s not until you actually see the kind of image that it delivers that you really internalize and go ‘wow!’� said Marcia Rieke during Monday’s NASA briefing on the calibration process for the $10 billion telescope. “Just think of what we’re going to learn.�

Scientists finished alligning each of Webb’s 18 mirror segments late last month and are now in the commissioning phase for the spacecraft’s various instruments.

The first science observations are slated to begin in July, but NASA is keeping the identity of Webb’s first official target a secret for now.

The telescope, launched into space nearly three decades after the Hubble Space Telescope, is designed to explore the cosmos both near and far, from the atmospheres of moons orbiting planets in our own solar system to the most distant observable galaxies in the early universe.

Launched into space from a South American spaceport on Christmas Day, Webb is the largest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever sent into space.

Each of its individual mirror segments is bigger than the entire mirror on Spitzer, with improved detectors that will allow astronomers to peer into the infrared sky with unprecedented clarity and depth.

It reached its final destination on Jan. 24: an orbital point around the sun that will keep it in line with Earth at a distance of about 1 million miles.

Once the science starts, U of A researchers should find themselves in the thick of it. NASA has allotted 13% of Webb’s total observing time to the university, the most of any astronomy center in the world.