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The international space telescope James Webb captured the first pictures of Jupiter and its moon this Thursday (14). The massive planet was seen through infrared, which highlights its different bands of color. In the image you can also see the Great Red Spot, which appears as a large white dot. The slick is actually a storm big enough to engulf the Earth.
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The material photographed includes images and spectra of several asteroids, captured to test the telescope’s instruments before scientific operations officially begin on July 12. The trial demonstrated that Webb tracks solar system targets and produces images and spectra in unprecedented detail.
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“Combined with the deep-field images released the other day, these images of Jupiter demonstrate the full understanding of what Webb can observe, from the faintest and most distant observable galaxies to planets in our own cosmic backyard that you can see with the eye. naked from his real backyard,” Bryan Holler, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who helped plan these observations, told NASA.
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Jupiter, in the center, and its moons Europa, Thebe and Metis — Photo: Nasa
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On the left is the moon called Europa, which likely harbors an ocean beneath its thick icy crust. She is the target of NASA’s next mission, dubbed Europa Clipper.
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The great asset of these records is proof that Webb can observe the satellites and rings close to bright objects in the solar system, such as Jupiter, Saturn and Mars.
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“I couldn’t believe we saw everything so clearly, and how bright they were,” said Stefanie Milam, deputy Webb project scientist for planetary science, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s really exciting to think about the ability and opportunity we have to observe these types of objects in our solar system.”
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Jupiter and some of its moons seen through NIRCam’s 3.23-micron filter — Photo: Nasa
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In addition, the telescope easily captured some of Jupiter’s rings, which stand out especially in the image of NIRcam’s long-wavelength filter, the infrared camera. Still according to Milam’s perception, that the rings appeared in one of Webb’s first images of the solar system is “absolutely surprising and incredible”.
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