Software Solution Can Correct Image Blurring by James Webb Space Telescope

This $10 billion telescope was taking blurry pictures. Sydney students fixed it

The extraordinary James Webb Space Telescope had a major problem before two young scientists unlocked its full potential.

Software solution can correct image blurring by James Webb Space Telescope

A pair of Sydney Ph.D. students helped sharpen the view of humanity's most powerful space observatory—without leaving Earth. As an indelible reminder of this thrilling result, Louis Desdoigts, now a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden in the Netherlands, and his colleague Max Charles, had tattoos of the instrument their work has repaired inked on their arms.

How we sharpened the James Webb telescope’s vision from a million kilometres away

A 'selfie' taken during Webb's testing on Earth. Ball AerospaceAfter Christmas dinner in 2021, our family was glued to the television, watching the nail-biting launch of NASA’s US$10 billion (AU$15 billion) James Webb Space Telescope. There had not been such a leap forward in telescope technology since Hubble was launched in 1990. En route to its deployment, Webb had to successfully navigate 344 potential points of failure. Thankfully, the launc…

How two Sydney students fixed the focus on the James Webb Space Telesc