NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is photographed 620,000 miles away by the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory
The European Space Agency's (ESA's) Gaia space observatory has shared a stunning photo of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.
The two telescopes are both currently orbiting the Lagranage point 2 (L2), roughly one million miles from EarthAnd on 18 February, Gaia snapped an amazing photo of its companion, despite being more than 620,000 miles (one million kilometres) away.
'On 18 February 2022, the two spacecraft were 1 million km apart, with an edge-on view of Gaia towards Webb's huge sunshield,' ESA said.
'Very little reflected sunlight came Gaia's way, and Webb therefore appears as a tiny, faint spec of light in Gaia's two telescopes without any details visible.'
The European Space Agency's (ESA's) Gaia space observatory has shared a stunning photo of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope
Webb reached its deep-space 'parking spot' at L2 back in January, and ahead of its arrival, ESA scientists realised that the space telescope would occasionally cross into Gaia's field of view.
While Gaia is not designed to take real pictures of celestial objects, the craft is equipped with a sky mapper, known as the 'finder scope.'
Every six hours, this finder scope scans a narrow 360-degree strip, gradually mapping the entire sky over the course of a few months.
Based on the upcoming sky scans, researchers Uli Bastian of Heidelberg University and Francois Mignard of Nice Observatory realised that Gaia might catch Webb on camera on February 18.
That day, Gaia's raw data was downloaded to Earth.
And on the morning of February 19, Francois sent an email to all those involved, with a subject line of 'JWST: Got it!!'
The team had to wait an agonising three further das for Juanma Martin-Fleitas, ESA's Gaia calibration engineer to confirm that it was indeed Webb in the images.
'I've identified out target,' he confirmd in an email, along with two images labelled 'Webb candidates.

The two telescopes are both currently orbiting the Lagranage point 2 (L2), roughly one million miles from Earth. Pictured: Gaia orbits L2 in a Lissajous orbit (yellow) while the James Webb Space Telescope orbits L2 in a halo orbit (blue)After studying the image, Uli simply replied: 'Your "candidates" can be safely renamed "Webb".'
Gaia is an ambitious mission to chart a three-dimensional map of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and in the process reveal its composition, formation and evolution.
Gaia has been circling the sun nearly a million miles beyond Earth's orbit since its launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) in December 2013.

'Very little reflected sunlight came Gaia's way, and Webb therefore appears as a tiny, faint spec of light in Gaia's two telescopes without any details visible,' ESA explained
On its journey, the probe has been discreetly snapping pictures of the Milky Way, identifying stars from smaller galaxies long ago swallowed up by our own.
Tens of thousands of previously undetected objects are expected to be discovered by Gaia, including asteroids that may one day threaten Earth, planets circling nearby stars, and exploding supernovas.
Meanwhile, NASA's James Webb telescope has been described as a 'time machine' that could help unravel the secrets of our universe.
The telescope will be used to look back to the first galaxies born in the early universe more than 13.5 billion years ago, and observe the sources of stars, exoplanets, and even the moons and planets of our solar system.
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