Astrophotographer captures James Webb telescope from 1 million kilometers away
Feb 7, 2022
Alex Baker
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
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Astrophotographer Jason Guenzel captured this incredible image of the Rosette Nebula with the James Webb telescope en route to its parking orbit. He managed to record 45 minutes of the telescope’s journey through space from no less than 1 million kilometres away (620,000 miles). “That’s 2.5 times further away from the moon,” says Jason, and even more impressive when you realise that he’s shooting through a “tiny backyard telescope.”
Jason had been following the route of the telescope since its launch, and immediately thought that he would like to get a photo of it. However, knowing how far away it was and how faint it would be, he wasn’t sure if his equipment would be capable of capturing it.
In the end, after tracking the journey he saw that the telescope would pass near the large Rosette Nebula. He says “I planned it out and went for it with a widefield telescope to capture the whole scene.” And Jason was rewarded with these spectacular images.
Guenzel exposed the sky for a total of over 4 hours and was captured using a TPO Ultrawide Telescope, an Astronomik L3 UV/IR cut filter, Deep Sky RGB filters, a Radian Triad Ultra filter, an ASI2600MM Pro camera, and a Celestron AVX telescope.
He says the satellite was more easily visible despite its distance, because of the freshly deployed sunshield. Jason describes it as “a tennis court sheet of reflective aluminum-coated material called Kapton.” He goes on to explain that “the reflected sunlight shines like a beacon coming right back to us.”
To assemble this image, I stacked the luminance data as a “maximum value” stack which renders JWST’s 45 minutes of motion against the background stars and nebulae as a streak of light. It’s crazy to see how the largest space exploration tool ever launched by humans is helplessly dwarfed by the cosmos.
– Jason Guenzel
After a month-long journey, the telescope settled into its final position in space, the L2 Lagrange point. We can look forward to some more spectacular images from it.
You can find more of Jason’s incredible images on his website, Twitter, and Instagram.
Alex Baker
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
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12 responses to “Astrophotographer captures James Webb telescope from 1 million kilometers away”
Why can’t the webb take pics of earth?
Why would they launch a telescope a million miles past the hubble telescope, to take pics of earth? Seems pointless
Agree ,we know what earth looks like Duh @!!!
Another reason is that, J.W. Telescope is designed to Observe Distant Parts of the Universe, and susequently take Images of Those Locations: It is Not Designed to Take Photos of ‘Close’ Objects in Space.
For one thing, the James Web doesn’t take pictures of visible light, like what you and I see with our own eyes, it takes infrared pictures. So, if it pointed its telescope towards earth, what would it see, not much. It would see the heat signature of earth. That’s if, the sun didn’t destroy the camera, from the heat and blinding telescope from the intense infrared the sun would be giving off. The visible light from distant object has shifted into the infrared spectrum and thus is the reason for the James Web.
Does that mean in future we should not be able to take sequential pictures of the earth ? as we climb, nothing is impossible, it depends on time of knowledge…so never say never.?
No, it says that we’ve already got plenty of cameras that can do that already. So, this one does something different. :)
Huh? I have no idea what you are saying
False @Simon. I think you misinterpreted what John was saying. What John is talking about what is happening to far objects in the universe, imagine you see a flash light hanging above you, and it shoots up further away from you until you can no longer see it, and the only way to see it is through a telescope and then you can’t see it in a telescope until you look through a special telescope equipped with seeing light with the ability to see infrared. Because infrared travels further on a spectrum but it’s on a thinner light spectrum that your eyes can’t see.
False @Simon. I think you misinterpreted what John was saying. What John is talking about what is happening to far objects in the universe, imagine you see a flash light hanging above you, and it shoots up further away from you until you can no longer see it, and the only way to see it is through a telescope and then you can’t see it in a telescope until you look through a special telescope equipped with seeing light with the ability to see infrared. Because infrared travels further on a spectrum but it’s on a thinner light spectrum that your eyes can’t see. Hopefully that clears it up for u.
I wish to GOD I would have stuck to my Dream as a Child…I wanted DO BADLY to be an Astronaut!! Then the Challenger Disaster scared the ? out of me. Everyone was crying & all I could think about was “I didn’t know it was that Dangerous” They are all DEAD …they didn’t even MAKE it to Space !! So I ended up being a Sound engineer instead, and a Drain & Tile Specialist & Carpentry & ..Well, a LOT of other things I DIDN’T dream of being as a Kid… Sometimes Life can be a disappointment & sometimes People can be Cowards, which is what I was then. I gave up my Dream because of ONE incident !! I decided I would NEVER be afraid of Dying again after that…EVER !! I can’t WAIT to see the 1st James Webb pictures !! ?