These images, which are expected to be amazing, are awaited by researchers around the world, and they will demonstrate the enormous capabilities of the James Webb Telescope.
The exact date of publication of these images will be determined at a later time, and their content will remain confidential until the last minute.
Klaus Pontopedan, director of the science program for the James Webb Telescope at the Science Institute, which operates the science instrument from Baltimore, promised to publish images taken by the four scientific instruments included with the telescope.
He pointed out during a press conference that “all topics” of the scientific observations of the telescope will be presented, namely the universe in its infancy, the life cycle of stars, and the outer planets.
The telescope works in infrared radiation, and thus will detect “colors that are not in the visible spectrum” of the eye, according to Pontopedan.
Before publishing the images, it will be necessary to “translate infrared colors into visible colors that humans can see.”
At the end of April, the James Webb Telescope completed the alignment phase of its large main mirror and its four science instruments.
Telescope images have previously been published, but they were of vast stellar fields used to calibrate instruments, not astrophysical targets of scientific interest.
For the photographs that will be revealed in mid-July, a committee has been set up to identify a long list of potential targets, in order of priority.
The James Webb Telescope, an international project worth 10 billion dollars, was successfully launched at the end of last year, and is currently 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
After these first scientific images are published, the first official observational cycle will begin. In particular, it is expected that the telescope will make it possible to observe the first galaxies that were formed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
The telescope’s mission is expected to last at least five years, but James Webb has enough fuel to operate for more than 20 years.