Image of the James Webb telescope seen from Earth

James Webb, the most powerful space telescope in history, is moving further and further away from Earth.

James Webb Space Telescope observed from the ground.

The James Webb space telescope, the fruit of decades of development by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, launched into space on December 25. Four days later, astrophysicist Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project watched the Webb telescope move through space with a robotic telescope. Masi combines several shots into a short video, where Webb's glasses appear as a small white dot in the sky.

Masi's image shows the Webb telescope moving towards its final destination, a gravitationally stable point in space called the Lagrange 2 point (L2) located between the Earth and the Sun, about 1.6 miles from our planet. million kilometers. At the time of observation, Webb was flying about 550,000km from Earth, 160,000km beyond the Moon's orbit.

To record the Webb telescope, the robotic telescope tracked Webb's movement across the sky. Masi acquired Webb's image with the PlaneWave 17"+Paramount ME+SEBIG STL-6303E telescope with 20-second exposure.At the same time as Masi was observing, the Webb telescope deployed the tower rig (DTA) to begin the stretch. giant heat shield, according to the Virtual Telescope Project.