NASA‘s James Webb Space Telescope has taken stunning images of Jupiter, showing two tiny moons, faint rings and auroras at the north and south poles, the US space agency reported.
“To be honest, we didn’t expect this to turn out so good“, said astronomer Imke de Pater, in a statement on Monday, August 22, quoted AFP.
“It’s really remarkable that we can see details about Jupiter along with its rings, its tiny satellites, and even galaxies, in a single image“, she said.
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De Pater led the Jupiter observations, together with Thierry Fouchet of the Paris Observatory. The images were taken with the observatory’s near-infrared camera, NIRCam, and artificially colored, because infrared light is not visible to the human eye.
Auroras over Jupiter’s north and south poles appear in redder colors, while the Great Red Spot, a storm larger than Earth, appears white. An image shows the faint rings of Jupiter and its moons Amalthea and Adrasthea.
Launched in December 2021 from French Guiana on an Ariane 5 rocket, the James Webb Space Telescope is orbiting the Sun at a distance of 1.6 million kilometers from Earth, in a region of space called the second Lagrange point.