James Webb Captured Floating in Space by Its Telescope Neighbor Gaia

The James Webb Space Telescope has been pictured by another space observatory, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia.

The two spacecraft were about 620,000 miles apart at the time the image was taken, yet Gaia was able to spot some of the light reflecting off of Webb's enormous mirror assembly.

Even more impressive is the fact that Gaia is not really designed to take real photos of space. Its focus is instead on collecting data on the positions and motions of distant objects.

However, Gaia is equipped with a sky mapper that takes four 360-degree panoramas per day, eventually covering the entire sky every few months or so in order to help researchers predict when Gaia might detect certain stars in future.

With the launch of Webb in December 2021, the scientists behind Gaia realized they could use the sky mapper to spot their new telescope neighbor.

Both Gaia and Webb operate in the same rough location in space, orbiting a point known as L2 which is about 930,000 miles away from Earth in the opposite direction to the sun—though Gaia has been there since 2014.

Webb arrived there on January 24 this year, and the telescope's scientists began the process of fine-tuning its delicate instruments in preparation for its first images in the coming weeks.

Then, on February 19, the Webb team received an email from the Gaia team with the subject line "JWST: Got it!"

What followed was the below photo, released under a creative commons license, of Webb taken by Gaia, seen as a tiny spec of light against a backdrop of stars.

ESA published the image in a press release on Wednesday, describing Webb as Gaia's "spacecraft friend at L2."

Webb has been releasing images of its own recently as its team work to calibrate the groundbreaking telescope ahead of its first scientific observations in the summer.

Since Webb had to be folded up in order to be launched into space, the telescope's intricate mirror system has had to be remotely re-aligned so that it can precisely reflect the light from distant stars, galaxies, and other objects in the universe that Webb will be used to peer at.

NASA has released a few images taken by Webb during this re-aligning process, including one this week that suggested the telescope's optics were working successfully—an important milestone for the telescope.

Once Webb is operational, the telescope will be able to peer deep into the universe, shedding light on the mysteries of dark matter and even aiding in the search for life on other worlds.