Overview: Australian students fix a long-standing JWST limitation
Two students from Sydney have quietly engineered a solution with global impact for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). By developing and applying a powerful software model, they corrected distortions in an onboard instrument and significantly sharpen the telescope’s deep-space images. The breakthrough not only improves the clarity of existing data but also expands JWST’s ability to detect Earth-like planets and study distant cosmic phenomena with unprecedented detail.
What they built: a digital twin that unmasks blurry space images
The project centered on the Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI), a delicate, metal instrument designed by Professor Peter Tuthill’s team at the University of Sydney. AMI slots into JWST’s camera to enhance resolution by mitigating disturbances that degrade light measurements. In practice, at very high resolutions, images produced by AMI could become blurry due to electronic distortions—most notably the “brighter-fatter” effect, where excess light spills over to neighboring pixels and muddies the picture.
Associate Professor Benjamin Pope of Macquarie University, who supervised the students, explains that the team’s solution was to build a digital twin of how AMI works. The software models the instrument’s physics and its response to light, then uses machine learning to reverse the distortions. In other words, they could take a blurry frame and reconstruct the crisp image that the telescope should have captured. This approach preserves the physical realism of the instrument while leveraging data-driven insights to correct imperfections in the signal.
The science in action: from theory to telescope-ready images
PhD student Louis Desdoigts spent two years crafting the software, a monumental effort that required vast computing power and careful validation. Fellow student Max Charles then applied the model to real JWST data, producing high-resolution images of three celestial targets. The results included the intricate spiral of gas and dust around a pair of stars in the Cygnus constellation, a powerful jet of matter near a supermassive black hole, and striking details from Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io. The improvements in Io’s cratered surface and edge detail demonstrated the method’s versatility across vastly different astronomical regimes.
Charles notes that achieving such fidelity from JWST—space-based observations that are both incredibly distant and bright—has long been a challenge. Demonstrating clarity on Io, which scientists know well from dedicated spacecraft, underscored the software’s reliability. Desdoigts adds that the work signals a broader potential: “I’m incredibly proud that we could extend the telescope’s scientific reach without leaving the lab.”
Why this matters: unlocking JWST’s full potential
AMI’s primary goal is to help JWST detect faint objects surrounded by bright stars, a task central to discovering and studying exoplanets and other subtle cosmic phenomena. By correcting the distortions that mar high-contrast imaging, the new method unlocks JWST’s ability to reveal faint signals closest to dazzling sources. In practical terms, astronomers gain sharper views of planet-forming disks, distant galaxies, and the environments around black holes, increasing the odds of identifying Earth-like worlds with data gathered by the world’s most powerful space telescope.
The researchers’ success also has a broader resonance for instrumentation science. Professor Tuthill emphasizes that the approach is not a one-off fix for AMI; it represents a scalable strategy. “Almost any instrument on any telescope could benefit from the approaches we’ve developed,” he says, hinting at future improvements across observational astronomy.
From Sydney to Europe: a continuing journey in astronomy
Since completing the core AMI work, Desdoigts moved on to a postdoctoral position at Leiden University in the Netherlands, a hub for astronomical research. Charles joined him for a Europe-focused trip, and the two have celebrated by marking the achievement with matching tattoos of the instrument that helped sharpen their careers and the universe they study.
Looking ahead
The journey from a lab bench to the skies underscores how clever software, grounded in physics and enhanced by machine learning, can extend the reach of flagship observatories. As JWST continues to collect data, the Sydney duo’s digital twin approach may become a standard tool in the astronomer’s kit, helping humanity glimpse the cosmos with greater clarity and perhaps bringing the discovery of new worlds closer than ever.
