Humankind is seeing Neptune’s rings in a whole new light thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope.
September 21st, infrared images of Neptune and its diadems of dust. Give yourself an ethereal glowIn the dark backdrop of space. The stunning portrait is a huge improvement over the rings’ previous close-up, which was taken more than 30 years ago.
Unlike the dazzling belts encircling Saturn, Neptune’s rings appear dark and faint in visible light, making them difficult to see from Earth. The last time anyone saw Neptune’s rings was in 1989, when NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraftAfter driving past the planet, she snapped some grainy photos of approximately 1,000,000 kilometers away.SN: 8/7/17). These photos were taken in visible light. The rings look like concentric, thin arcs..
As Voyager 2 continued to interplanetary space, Neptune’s rings once again went into hiding — until July. That’s when the James Webb Space TelescopeJWST, also known as JAX, turned its infrared eyes toward the planet, starting at 4.4 billion km away.SN: 7/11/22).
In the new image, Neptune appears almost entirely dark. That’s because methane gas in the planet’s atmosphere absorbs much of its infrared light. Some bright spots indicate areas where methane ice clouds at high altitude reflect sunlight.
There are also the mysterious rings. “The rings have lots of ice and dust in them, which are extremely reflective in infrared light,” says Stefanie Milam, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and one of JWST’s project scientists. The enormity of the telescope’s mirror also makes its images extra sharp. “JWST was designed to look at the first stars and galaxies across the universe, so we can really see fine details that we haven’t been able to see before,” Milam says.
Neptune will be viewed by JWST with other scientific instruments. That should provide new intel on the rings’ composition and dynamics, as well as on how Neptune’s clouds and storms evolve, Milam says. “There’s more to come.”
