{"id":303595,"date":"2025-10-14T21:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T21:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/303595\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T21:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T21:04:09","slug":"software-solution-can-correct-image-blurring-by-james-webb-space-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/303595\/","title":{"rendered":"Software solution can correct image blurring by James Webb Space Telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/p>\n

Before and after the image sharpening process. Credit: Max Charles\/University of Sydney<\/p>\n

A pair of Sydney Ph.D. students helped sharpen the view of humanity’s most powerful space observatory\u2014without 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.<\/p>\n

This technical breakthrough saw University of Sydney researchers develop a software fix that corrected blurring in images made by NASA’s multibillion-dollar James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), restoring crisp performance to one of its vital scientific instruments\u2014all without the need for a space mission or astronaut repair.<\/p>\n

The achievement builds on the only piece of Australian-designed hardware on the JWST\u2014the Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI)\u2014created by Professor Peter Tuthill from the University of Sydney’s School of Physics and Sydney Institute for Astronomy. The AMI lets astronomers to take ultra-high-resolution images of stars and exoplanets by combining light from multiple patches on the telescope’s main mirror, a technique known as interferometry.<\/p>\n

However, after JWST began operations, scientists discovered that AMI’s performance was being degraded by subtle electronic distortions in its infrared camera detector. These were injecting fuzziness into recovered images\u2014a problem reminiscent of the predecessor to JWST, the Hubble Space Telescope’s early “blurry vision” after launch, which famously required a space shuttle mission<\/a> and astronaut spacewalks to correct.<\/p>\n

Rather than designing a new lens or mounting such a costly rescue mission, Ph.D. students Louis Desdoigts and Max Charles from Professor Tuthill’s group, also working with Associate Professor Ben Pope (at Macquarie University), created a data-driven, software-only calibration system that fixed the focus from the ground.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Louis Desdoigts and Max Charles have matching tattoos of the ‘Non-Redundant Mask’ they helped repair. (Dr. Desdoigts arm is on the left). Credit: University of Sydney<\/p>\n

Their system, called AMIGO (Aperture Masking Interferometry Generative Observations), uses advanced simulations and neural networks<\/a> to model how the telescope’s optics and electronics behave in space. By understanding an imperfection in which electrical charge<\/a> bleeds over into neighboring pixels, a process known as the brighter-fatter effect, the team developed algorithms that “de-blurred” the images and restored AMI’s full sensitivity.<\/p>\n

“Instead of sending astronauts to bolt on new parts, they managed to fix things with code,” Professor Tuthill said. “It’s a brilliant example of how Australian innovation can make a global impact in space science.”<\/p>\n

The fix has produced spectacular results<\/a>. With AMIGO, the James Webb Space Telescope has achieved sharper-than-ever detections of faint celestial objects\u2014including the direct imaging of a dim exoplanet and a red-brown dwarf orbiting the nearby star HD 206893, about 133 light years from Earth.<\/p>\n

A companion study<\/a> led by Max Charles, a Ph.D. student at Sydney, has demonstrated AMI’s renewed focus by capturing high-resolution images of a black hole jet, the volcanic surface of one of Jupiter’s moons (Io) and the dusty stellar winds of WR 137\u2014pushing the boundaries of JWST’s capabilities.<\/p>\n

“This work brings JWST’s vision into even sharper focus,” Dr. Desdoigts said. “It’s incredibly rewarding to see a software solution extend the telescope’s scientific reach\u2014and to know it was possible without ever leaving the lab.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Desdoigts has now landed a postdoctoral research position at Leiden University in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

Both studies have been published on the pre-print server arXiv. Dr. Desdoigts’s paper has been peer-reviewed and will shortly be published in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. This release coincides with the latest round<\/a> of James Webb Space Telescope General Observer, Survey and Archival Research programs.<\/p>\n

Associate Professor Benjamin Pope, who will present these findings at SXSW Sydney<\/a> on Friday, and said the research team was keen to get the new code into the hands of researchers working on JWST as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

More information:<\/strong>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLouis Desdoigts et al, AMIGO: a Data-Driven Calibration of the JWST Interferometer, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550\/arxiv.2510.09806<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Max Charles et al, Image reconstruction with the JWST Interferometer, arXiv (2025). DOI: 10.48550\/arxiv.2510.10924<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJournal information:<\/strong>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tarXiv<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tProvided by
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUniversity of Sydney<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCitation<\/strong>:
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSoftware solution can correct image blurring by James Webb Space Telescope (2025, October 14)
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tretrieved 14 October 2025
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tfrom https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2025-10-software-solution-image-blurring-james.html\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before and after the image sharpening process. Credit: Max Charles\/University of Sydney A pair of Sydney Ph.D. students…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":303596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[493,494,492,489,159,490,158,491,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-303595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-materials","9":"tag-nanotech","10":"tag-physics","11":"tag-physics-news","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-science-news","14":"tag-technology","15":"tag-technology-news","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115374553061906838","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}