NASA has released a new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. The US space agency says the telescope’s mirror has been so well modified that the images may be better than expected.

NASA has released an image of the star 2MASS J17554042 + 6551277 taken with the Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera. The image is the first result of an important milestone that the telescope completed on March 11: it fine stages† This is the focus of the telescope using data from NIRCam, which records infrared images. During this process, it was found that “every visual parameter checked and tested performed satisfactorily or above expectations”, NASA writes† The star image now captured was generated from images taken using all 18 of the telescope’s individual mirrors.

According to NASA, NIRCam is now fully prepared to work properly with JWST’s primary mirror. The NIRCam is the primary camera in the telescope, but there are some other important scientific instruments, such as the near-infrared spectrometers and the mid-infrared instrument. It will be further coordinated and focused in the next month and a half. This is followed by another process of finally concentrating all the tools together.

NASA says the images are better than expected. “The performance is beyond our expectations,” says Ritva Director of Opticals Keski Koha. No quirks were detected while focusing. “The team found no critical problems, no contamination, or measurable obstructions in the telescope’s optics,” the space agency wrote.

In addition to the star 2MASS, dozens of galaxies can also be seen. These objects are just an accidental trap for the telescope’s focusing process, but these types of deep field images with multiple galaxies very far away will come up more often. While the Hubble telescope sometimes had to focus on a point for weeks to get such deep-field images, James Webb takes much less time to do so.