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Object

HD 84406

A glowing orange star with a bright core and a faint outer glow, set against a dark, star-speckled background, representing the isolated G-type star HD 84406 in Ursa Major, chosen for the James Webb Space Telescope's first alignment due to its brightness and isolation.

An unremarkable G-type star in Ursa Major, about 260 light-years away, visible only through a telescope. It was chosen as Webb's first alignment target because of its isolation: bright enough to image easily, with no comparably bright neighbours to confuse the eighteen separate mirror reflections. Over February 2022 its light was used to walk the segments into a single coherent image.

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