Jupiter observed by the Webb

Impeccably launched by Ariane 5 at the end of 2021the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST or more simply the Webb) operates 1.5 million kilometers from our planet, orbiting the Lagrange point L2 Earth-Sun gravitational equilibrium. Its first publicly available images confirmed that the space observatory was operating beyond expected performance.

Jupiter in infrared

Images shown on July 11 then the day following concerned objects outside our solar system with galaxies, a star formation zone, the death of a sun or the spectroscopy of the atmosphere of an exoplanet.
However, the Webb, which associates 3 space agencies (NASA for the United States, ESA for Europe and CSA for Canada) was also designed to scrutinize what revolves around our Sun, such as the demonstrates a recent photo of Jupiter by this observatory.

Jupiter in infrared (the color blue is a way of visualizing data that the human eye cannot see) by the Webb. This image shows the gas giant’s fine rings, its Earth-wider Great Red Spot anticyclone, two moons, and the aurora.
Credit: Cité de l’Espace (captions) from NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt.

This unprecedented portrait of the largest planet in the Solar System uses data from 2 infrared filters from the NIRCam (Near InfraRed Camera) instrument.
Another image of the giant, below, combines data from 3 filters from the same instrument.

Jupiter par l’instrument NIRCam du James Webb Space Telescope.
Crédit : NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.

It should be noted that the 2 images of Jupiter presented in this article were prepared by Judy Schmidta citizen scientist from California who works passionately on public data from space observatories.

Before these two spectacular portraits of Jupiter, the Webb teams had also published the very beautiful image below showing the chariot wheel galaxy whose star-forming activity was boosted following encountering another galaxy.

The Chariot Wheel galaxy 400 million light-years away by Webb’s MIRI and NIRCam instruments.
Credit : NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI