The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured Neptune in extraordinary detail. The new photos show the planet, some of its moons and four rings. Since the discovery of Neptune in 1846, the planet has fascinated astronomers around the world. The ice giant orbits the Sun every 164.8 years and hides its secrets in one of the darkest parts of the solar system. But infrared scientific imaging instruments mounted on the world’s most modern observatory allow you to see the planet’s hidden features and show them in a whole new light.
Neptune is the furthest and eighth planet in our system. It is 17 times more massive than Earth and slightly larger than its twin Uranus. It is the fourth largest planet in the solar system and the third largest planet and orbits our star at a distance 30 times greater than the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
The gas giant has 14 known moons. The largest of these is Triton, which, unlike the planets and most moons in our planetary system, is retrograde, indicating that it was once an asteroid possibly in the Kuiper belt but was swept into Neptune’s orbit. by gravity.
Neptune has a completely different structure than the larger gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. In comparison, Neptune is much richer in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Therefore, it is classified by astronomers as an ice giant to highlight these differences. It is similar with Uranus. Scientists believe that within these planets there is a small core of ice surrounded by a liquid ocean. It is these oceans that are responsible for mass, not gas, as is the case with gas giants.
So far, Neptune has only been visited once by a terrestrial probe, and it was Voyager II that passed Neptune in August 1989. But that may change when NASA formulates a plan to return to the frozen planets on the fringes of our solar system.
In Neptune’s fresh paintings, his rings are the most eye-catching. Astronomers had clues to the existence of the ring system around Neptune before visiting Voyager II, but it was only the close flight of the Earth probe about 4,950 km above Neptune’s north pole that confirmed the existence of the ad system. ring and generally provided almost all of the current knowledge about them. Now the new image provided by the Webb telescope clearly shows four of the six known rings.
The new images show Neptune’s two bright rings, as well as two slightly darker ones closer to the planet. They are the ones that arouse the greatest interest. Compared to the light iced rings, the darker ones are filled with dust, which prevents them from shining just as brightly.
“It’s been three decades since we last saw those faint, dusty links. Now we see them for the first time in infrared, says Heidi Hammel, who works on the Webb telescope project.
Low concentrations of methane gas cause Neptune to appear blue in images from the Hubble Space Telescope, which showed the planet in visible wavelengths. In NIRCM images in the near infrared range of 0.6 to 5 microns, the ice giant does not have such a beautiful color. In fact, methane gas absorbs infrared light so strongly that the planet is quite dark at these wavelengths, with the exception of high-altitude clouds. These clouds appear as bright streaks and dots that reflect sunlight before it is absorbed by methane.
A thinner, thinner line of light near the planet’s equator could be the visual signature of the global atmospheric circulation that drives Neptune’s winds and storms. The atmosphere heats up at the equator and therefore shines with infrared light more than the surrounding and colder gases. The new images indicate an intriguing brightness in the planet’s north pole region that isn’t quite visible in the image.
Webb also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons. The image is dominated by the view of Triton with Webb’s “diffraction peaks”. This moon, covered in solidified nitrogen, reflects up to 70 percent. sunlight. In the image, it significantly eclipses Neptune because the planet’s atmosphere is obscured by the absorption of methane at near-infrared wavelengths.
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