Stunning images of Neptune captured by the James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope is the first space science observatory in the world, where Webb is expected to solve the mysteries of our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars and probe the origins of the universe and our place in it.

Once again and certainly not the last, NASA's James Webb Telescope amazes us with new, high-resolution images of Neptune - the farthest planet from the sun in our solar system - and its surrounding rings that we haven't seen since the Voyager 2 probe passed by 30 years ago.

The press release published on the "Web Telescope" website states that what is dazzling in the new images of James Webb is the clarity of seeing the rings of the planet Neptune, in addition to the appearance of bright and narrow rings, and faint bands of dust, says Heidi Hamill, an expert in the Neptune system and a multidisciplinary scientist for Telescope. Webb "It's been 3 decades since we last saw those faint, dusty beams, and this is the first time we've seen them in the infrared range."

The statement also states that the quality of the web's image is very stable and accurate, allowing the discovery of these very faint rings near Neptune, the planet that has astonished researchers since its discovery in 1846, as it is located 30 times the distance between the Sun and Earth, and orbits in the far dark region of the outer solar system. The sun is so small and faint that noon on Neptune is like the faint twilight time on Earth.

Blue planet

Neptune is characterized as an ice giant due to its internal chemical composition. Compared to the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), Neptune is much richer than elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, and this is easily evident in the distinctive blue appearance of Neptune in the Hubble Space Telescope images taken at visible wavelengths, It is caused by small amounts of methane gas.

The near-infrared webcam (NIRCam) visualizes objects in the near-infrared range from 0.6 to 5 microns, so Neptune does not appear blue, as methane absorbs red and infrared light so strongly that the planet is completely dark at these lengths In the near-infrared waveform, except where clouds are located at high altitudes, icy methane clouds appear as bright streaks and spots that reflect sunlight before it is absorbed by methane.

Neptune's 164-year orbit means that the North Pole (at the top of this image) is far from astronomers' view, but Webb's images indicate an interesting brightness in that region, where the previously known vortex appears at the South Pole from Webb's view, but For the first time, Webb has detected a continuous set of clouds in the high latitudes surrounding them.

Neptune's moons

Webb also spotted 7 of Neptune's 14 known moons, and in Webb's images it clearly shows a very bright spot with the characteristic diffraction heights seen in many Webb images, but this is not a star; It is Neptune's unusually large moon Triton, which is covered in a frozen sheen of intense nitrogen, which, on average, reflects 70% of the sunlight that strikes it.

Triton greatly outperforms Neptune in this image because the planet's atmosphere darkens by absorbing methane at near-infrared wavelengths, and Triton orbits Neptune in an unusual backward orbit, leading astronomers to speculate that this moon was originally an object in the Kuiper Belt. Captured by Neptune's gravity, additional Webb-assisted studies of Neptune and Triton are scheduled for next year.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the first space science observatory in the world, where Webb is expected to solve the mysteries of our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars and probe the origins of the universe and our place in it.