NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured stunning images of the planet Jupiter, showing two tiny moons, faint rings and auroras at the north and south poles.
“To be honest, we didn’t really expect it to be that good,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley.
“It’s really remarkable that we can see details on Jupiter along with its rings, tiny satellites and even galaxies in one image,” she said.
De Pater, along with Thierry Fouchet of the Paris Observatory, led the observations of Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system.
The composite images were taken with the observatory’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam) and artificially colored because infrared light is not visible to the human eye.
The auroras over Jupiter’s north and south poles have been shown in redder colors, while the Great Red Spot, a storm larger than Earth, appears white.
An image shows Jupiter’s faint rings and its moons Amalthea and Adrastea.
Launched in December 2021 from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket, Webb orbits the Sun one million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth in a region of space known as the second Lagrange point referred to as.
It took the spacecraft nearly a month to reach the region where it remains in a fixed position behind Earth and the Sun, giving it a clear view of the cosmos.
The Webb Telescope is an international collaboration between the US space agency NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, involving more than 10,000 people.
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