CNRS researcher Olivier Berné expresses his relief after the successful deployment of the largest telescope ever sent into space by man. He will soon be able to analyze shots of the Orion galaxy.
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“We breathe a little, now that these stages have passed”, testifies Sunday January 9 on franceinfo Olivier Berné, researcher at the CNRS and astrophysicist at the Institute for Research in Astrophysics and Planetology of Toulouse. It responds to the successful deployment of the James Webb Telescope, after it launched into space on December 25.
franceinfo: The telescope is now fully deployed, is that already an achievement?
Yes, there were a hundred deployment mechanisms that had to go perfectly, and 300 critical steps to go through. It was really a challenge for the engineers and technicians. We breathe a little, now that all these stages are over.
Is he deployed but has not started to work?
No, all the elements are already in place, especially the mirror. The telescope is so big, six meters long, that it did not fit into a rocket, so it had to be folded and unfolded. The last adjustments will still take some time: align the mirrors, let the whole system cool down so that the telescope can observe correctly, and then you will have to turn on all the instruments on board. All this will take about 6 months. In June, we could have the first images of the cosmos.
What would you like to know first?
I work with an international team and we are lucky to be able to use this observatory at the very beginning of its operational part. Our goal is to observe a region of the sky, called the Orion Nebula, to try to understand our origins, especially that of the solar system. We are going to observe a region within which the stars and planets are formed, similar to the one in which our solar system was formed. This telescope is a time machine: if you look at a galaxy 13 billion light years away from you, you see it as it was 13 billion light years ago.