The countdown to when NASA will show us the first images captured by James Webb is coming to an end. except the incomprehensible Next Tuesday, July 12, we will be able to see the final result for the first time a project that was born in the last century and which, after many delays and cost increases, finally began its journey into space last Christmas. A milestone that many of us are celebrating with great joy, but there is still a lot of work ahead.

Since his arrival at the Lagrange point L2, James Webb dedicated these months to the deployment and commissioning of its mirrors and systemsa wide set of procedures with the utmost precision, which is necessary to guarantee the correct functioning of the telescope and the sufficient spacing of the mirrors to avoid errors, distortions, etc. And during these processes, James Webb sent some control images, like the ones we could see last March .

Once fully operational, the telescope will not send all the images it takes back to Earth. Some of these are used internally by James Webb himself to operate them.. So they are not sent to our planet because it is unnecessary and the bandwidth is limited, so it will be devoted to the transmission of images necessary for scientific projects that rely on telescope observations.

However, with the first images still a few days away and James Webb starting to work around the clock, the team realized they had some slack and decided to collect FGS images (Fine Guidance Sensor), an essential part of the guidance system, to observe the views of the telescope using the instrument necessary for its navigation.

The image shared by NASA actually is composite of 72 shots captured by FGS over 32 hoursand what we see in it are some stars in the foreground and a sea of ​​bright galaxies in the background. And I don’t know about you, but for me, watching all those dots in the background and thinking that each one is a galaxy is both fascinating and elusive. describe, but I can summarize it in two points: How small we are and how absurd it would be if there was no life other than ours, don’t you think?