T80Cam, the scientific camera of the JAST80 telescope of the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (CEFCA's observatory), has taken its first image of the Javalambre night sky. This achievement is known as First Light, as this is the first time that light coming from an astronomical object is registered by the T80Cam detector.

The selected object was M101 (or NGC 5457). It was observed with the T80Cam last February 19, 2015. M101 is a spiral galaxy located 25 million light years from earth, that is, the light that was captured by T80Cam was emitted by the galaxy 25 million years ago.

The first light image is considered an engineering image as the instrument needs to go through a detailed process of fine tuning and calibration before it is ready to provide scientific quality images. However, being an engineering image it has already demonstrated the high performances provided by T80Cam and JAST80 systems (in terms of image quality, field of view and detector quality) as well as the data processing and storage facility at CEFCA (UPAD).