More exciting than Kodachrome!

Nope, I have not yet sent my ancient old Kodachrome film to a photo lab for black-and-white processing. That’s still on the “someday” list.

BUT … better than any roll of ordinary camera film is the prospect of images from a brand-new telescope! One that’s been in the works for a quarter-century now!! NASA is about to unveil the “first light” images from the James Webb Space Telescope!!

Tomorrow morning (by U.S. time) is the big space-agency shindig, but President Biden is supposed to reveal one photo in less than an hour from now. I’m hoping he will paraphrase a classic potato-chip advertising slogan and say, “Bet I can’t show just one!” All the deets about NASA’s rollout of the new era in astronomy are at https://go.nasa.gov/3Ir0KZT.

Since Christmas Day, I have been following the updates on the telescope’s journey, the unfolding of its mirror, and the commissioning of its instruments (about which I wrote more than a decade earlier). After the roller-coaster ride the Hubble Space Telescope gave us, I’m glad that JWST’s deployment has gone strictly according to plan. What a relief!