First came a set of pictures from the furthest corners of space. Then a stellar snapshot of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Now, officials from NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have released a set of new photos captured by the Webb Space Telescope. This time around, the observatory has taken a glance towards Neptune, capturing the ice giant in its full glory, rings and all.
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“It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” Webb scientist Heidi Hammel says in a new NASA blog post. In the picture released by the agency, Neptune can be seen with its massive rings and at least four of the planet’s 14 moons.
Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured the photos, show a brighter Neptune than its traditional dark blue hue given the technology used on the observatory.
“Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) images objects in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns, so Neptune does not appear blue to Webb. In fact, the methane gas so strongly absorbs red and infrared light that the planet is quite dark at these near-infrared wavelengths, except where high-altitude clouds are present,” NASA explains. “Such methane-ice clouds are prominent as bright streaks and spots, which reflect sunlight before it is absorbed by methane gas.”
The agency adds, “More subtly, a thin line of brightness circling the planet’s equator could be a visual signature of global atmospheric circulation that powers Neptune’s winds and storms. The atmosphere descends and warms at the equator, and thus glows at infrared wavelengths more than the surrounding, cooler gases.”
Neptune is around 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth. That means the brightest part of a day on Neptune is about as bright as a dim twilight on our planet.
