Current space missions – including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) – benefit from many technological breakthroughs. These go hand in hand with a considerable increase in astronomical images. Exploiting this data, which holds ever more information, requires the development of new tools.
Developed by NASA in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the James Webb Space Telescope observes the Universe in near and mid infrared. This enables it to examine waves emitted in distant times. In effect, space is expanding, which shifts the light that has travelled from the supposed time of the formation of the first stars and galaxies, several hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, out of the visible spectrum into infrared.
Algorithms make it possible to apply various treatments to optimize JWST’s settings and correct different sources of noise in the raw image.