The Webb Space Telescope has been photographing to the planet Jupiter as never seen before. The gas giant shines brightly in the latest batch of images from the Webb, showing bright auroras at its north and south poles, huge storms that have been raging for centuries, extremely faint rings, and two of the planet’s 79 known moons.
The near infrared camera Webb (NIRCam) took the images on July 27, giving scientists unprecedented views of Jupiter. “We really didn’t expect them to be so goodto be honest”, he said in a communiqué Imke de Pater, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the recent Jupiter observations. “We have never seen Jupiter like this. It is pretty amazing.”
Jupiter is always a wonder. During years, the Juno spacecraft has sent back incredible images of the largest planet in the solar system showing its swirling winds and gaseous streaks. But the amount of detail revealed by the images of the Webb is something else. That’s due to Webb’s ability to collect infrared light, a wavelength that isn’t visible to the human eye but can travel through gas and dust that would otherwise obscure the light . the images you see here I know translate to the visible spectrum so we can see them and to highlight specific features of Jupiter.
“Although we have already seen many of these features on Jupiter, the infrared wavelengths of the JWST give us a new perspective,” said de Pater. Jupiter has the brightest auroras in the solar system, and images reveal auroral emissions from ionized hydrogen as a high-altitude haze over the planet’s north and south poles.
G/O Media may get a commission
Another main feature is Jupiter’s famous storm, the Great Red Spot. This high pressure storm is believed to have been brewing for hundreds of years, spinning counterclockwise. In the images it appears as a white point because it reflects a lot of sunlight, according to NASA. “The brightness here indicates a high altitude, so the Great Red Spot has high-altitude haze, as does the equatorial region,” Heidi Hammel, an interdisciplinary scientist at the University of California, said in a statement. Webb for observations of the solar system. “The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely high-altitude cloud tops from condensed convective storms.”
The Webb also revealed Jupiter’s dark ring system, which is a million times fainter than Jupiter itself, and the moons Amalthea and Adrasthea. The psmall bright dots in the background are distant galaxies. “It’s really extraordinary that we can see details of Jupiter along with its rings, small satellites and even galaxies in a single image,” said de Pater.
It is expected that the Webb works during regarding 20 years and possibly more. The telescope is currently at a point celestial that is 1.5 million kilometers away, from the which observes nearby objects and some of the most distant lights in the universe.
