The most surprising thing about the new photo of James Webb Space Telescope is the sharp resolution of the planet’s dynamic rings, some of which have never been seen, let alone so clearly, since the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989. In addition to the many bright, narrow rings, Webb’s images clearly show Neptune’s faint dust lanes. The very accurate and stable image quality also allows these very faint rings to be detected near the planet.
Neptune has fascinated and puzzled researchers since its discovery in 1846. It is located 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth, Neptune orbits in one of the darkest regions of our solar system. At that extreme distance, the sun appears so small and its light becomes so dim that noon Neptune It is similar to the aurora on Earth. This planet is characterized as an ice giant due to the chemical composition of its interior. Compared to the gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, Neptune is much richer in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. This is easily evidenced by the blue appearance of Neptune, caused by small amounts of methane, which can be seen in images acquired by the Hubble Space Telescope at visible wavelengths.
webcam near infrared Nircam ) captures objects in the near-infrared range, so Neptune does not appear in James Webb’s blue. In fact, methane is absorbed so strongly that the planet is completely dark at telescope wavelengths, except where there are high-altitude clouds. These icy methane clouds stand out as bright streaks and dots that reflect sunlight before it is absorbed by the methane gas. Images from other observatories have recorded these distinct clouds, which develop rapidly over the years.
More precisely, the thin, bright line encircling the planet’s equator could be a visual sign of the global atmospheric circulation driving Neptune’s winds and storms. The atmosphere sinks and heats up at the equator, and thus glows at more infrared wavelengths than the cooler gases around it. A previously known vortex at the planet’s south pole can also be seen in this image, but now for the first time James Webb has revealed the continuous band of clouds that surround it.
Webb also captured seven of Neptune’s fourteen known moons. The frame grip is a very bright spot of light that has the characteristic diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb’s photographs; It’s not a star, but Neptune’s most elusive moon, Triton. Triton reflects an average of 70% of the sunlight that falls on it. It greatly outperforms Neptune because the planet’s atmosphere is obscured by absorption of methane at Webb wavelengths. Triton orbits Neptune in a strange retrograde orbit, leading astronomers to speculate that this moon was actually a Kuiper Belt object that was gravitationally captured by Neptune.
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Neptune, the blue planet and ice on the edge of the solar system
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