Long before webb even launched from French Guiana, we’ve been waiting for this moment: the first full-color images from this cutting-edge space telescope. NASA announced yesterday that those pictures will be available on July 12, along with some spectroscopic data.
The release of Webb’s first full-color images will offer a unique moment for us all to stop and mal at a view humanity has never seen before,” said Eric Smith, a Webb program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a NASA release.
Webb launched on December 25 and arrived at its observation point in space—a place called L2, a million miles from Earth—one month later. Since then, NASA scientists (as well as scientists at the European and Canadian space agencies, who are partners on the telescope mission) have been hard at work preparing the machine to do science.