The James Webb Space Telescope (James Webb Space Telescope/JWST) sent its first stunning photo of the planet Saturn on Friday 30 June 2023. Photo/NASA/JWST
JAKARTA – The James Webb Space Telescope (James Webb Space Telescope/JWST) sent the first photo planet Saturnus on Friday June 30, 2023. JWST’s first official photo stunningly shows the ringed planet in a whole new way.
The newly released images were captured over 20 hours by JWST’s Saturn-observing campaign mission. Photo that began recording on June 25 by the observatory’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument.
“Saturn appears very dark at infrared wavelengths observed by telescopes, because the methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight that falls into the atmosphere. However, the ice rings remain relatively bright, making for an unusual appearance of Saturn,” NASA said as quoted by SINDOnews from the Space page, Monday (3/7/2023).
It’s not just the appearance of Saturn’s rings that look amazing. The JWST telescope also clearly records 3 satellites or moons near Saturn, namely Enceladus, Dione and Tethys. It is known that Saturn has 145 moons.
Enceladus is of particular interest to astrobiologists, as it is thought to have an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell. The moon blasts some of its subsurface water out into space via geysers near its south pole.
The dramatic feature was discovered by NASA’s Cassini probe in 2005 and recently observed by JWST. JWST is designed to peer deeper into time, allowing astronomers to see some of the first stars and galaxies in the universe.
But, as the new Saturn shots show, observatories can also see other objects that are nearby. “The results have already caught the attention of researchers,” NASA said
Previously, this USD 10 billion telescope has also taken stunning photos of Uranus and provided incredible views of Jupiter and its polar auroras. JWST just started operating as a space observatory on December 25, 2021 and started science operations last summer.
(wib)
2023-07-03 04:37:07
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