Sharpening the JWST images: top row is raw data images of galaxy NGC 1068, Jupiter’s moon Io and Wolf-Rayet star 137 (or WR 137). The bottom row shows sharpened or ‘deblurred’ images after being processed by the pipeline developed by Louis Desdoigts and Max Charles. Credit: Max Charles/University of Sydney
Two PhD students from Sydney have helped restore the sharp vision of the world’s most powerful space observatory without ever leaving the ground. Louis Desdoigts, now a postdoctoral researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and his colleague Max Charles celebrated their achievement with tattoos of the instrument they repaired inked on their arms — an enduring reminder of their contribution to space science.
A Groundbreaking Software Fix
Researchers at the University of Sydney developed an innovative software solution that corrected blurriness in images captured by NASA’s multi-billion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Their breakthrough restored the full precision of one of the telescope’s key instruments, achieving what would once have required a costly astronaut repair mission.