Neptune's Rings are Wonderfully captured by the James Webb Space Telescope

What really sticks out in Webb's most recent image is the clarity of the planet's rings, some of which have not been seen since NASA's Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its approach in 1989.

Neptune by JWS Telescope

In more than 30 years, the James Webb Space Telescope of the US space agency NASA has recorded the clearest glimpse of Neptune's rings.

 

New York, September 22: NASA has revealed that the James Webb Space Telescope has taken the first crystal-clear photographs of Neptune's rings in more than 30 years.

 

What really sticks out in Webb's most recent image is the clarity of the planet's rings, some of which have not been seen since NASA's Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe Neptune during its approach in 1989. Neptune's fainter dust bands are strikingly seen in the Webb image alongside its several dazzling, thin rings.

 

It has been thirty years since we last seen these feeble, dusty rings, and the infrared is the first time we have ever seen them, according to a statement from Heidi Hammel, a transdisciplinary scientist for Webb and an authority on the Neptune system.

NASA claims that the extraordinarily consistent and accurate image quality provided by Webb is what allows these incredibly faint rings to be seen so close to Neptune.

 

Webb also photographed Neptune's 7 of 14 known moons. This Webb painting of Neptune is dominated by an extremely bright point of light, but this object is not a star; instead, it bears the unique diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb's images. Triton is Neptune's large and unusual moon.

 

Triton reflects 70% of the sunlight that it receives on average due to its icy sheen of condensed nitrogen. Because methane absorbs at these near-infrared wavelengths, it outshines Neptune by a wide margin in this photograph.

 

Neptune has fascinated scientists ever since it was discovered in 1846. It orbits in the distant, dark area of the outer solar system, 30 times further from the Sun than Earth. As a result of the chemical composition of its interior, this planet is classified as an ice giant.