▲ The largest moon Triton shines imposingly, boasting diffraction spikes above ringed Neptune. Source: NASA
Looking like a ‘cosmic abstraction’, this image is a view of Neptune captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared camera. Glowing rings are visible around the ice giant. No telescope has ever captured such a view of Neptune.
Neptune is the farthest orbiting planet out of the eight planets in the solar system and is about 30 times farther away than Earth. The planet’s dark, ghostly appearance in the image is due to methane in Neptune’s atmosphere, which absorbs infrared light. Neptune’s high-altitude methane clouds absorb most of the infrared light, giving off such a sharp glow.
Boasting an intense diffraction spike at the upper left of the image is Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, bathed in frozen nitrogen, shining brighter than Neptune in sunlight. These diffraction spikes are characteristic of the Webb telescope, which consists of a piece of reflector.
Seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons, including Triton, can be discerned in the field of view. Neptune’s faint rings are particularly eye-catching in this planetary portrait, and details of the complex Neptune ring system have been shown here for the first time since the Voyager 2 spacecraft first visited Neptune in August 1989.
Neptune was jointly discovered by Adams of England and Le Verrier of France in 1846, and the two first predicted the existence of Neptune using Newton’s gravitational equation. it was found At first, it was said that the two people and the two countries discovered each other first, but eventually it was settled as a joint discovery.
In 1989, Voyager 2, after a long journey of 12 years, approached Neptune’s north pole for the first time in human history to 4,656 km, and discovered five rings around Neptune. It was named after the discoverer of Neptune, such as Le Verrier, Adams, and Galle, but the name of John Airy, director of the Greenwich Observatory, who eventually refused Adams’ request for observation, was not named. Sometimes history seems to punish like this.
Neptune’s orbital period is 165 years, and it has been 165 years, exactly one period since it was discovered in 2011. On September 23 of that year, Neptune, which had traveled 28 billion km around the sun, returned to the position where it was first discovered and appeared again to mankind. One cycle ago, I couldn’t see any of the people who were arguing that they had discovered Neptune first.
Lee Kwang-sik, science columnist joand999@naver.com
