NASA's most powerful eye on Jupiter has been cast with a new set of images from theJWST.
This week, NASA released its first full-color images of the universe, showing that the observatory can peer more than 13 billion light-years across the universe. There are clouds of dust in the universe.
More familiar objects can be imaged closer by theJWST. The new images show Jupiter in stunning detail. There are moons around the gas giant. Scientists think there is a saltwater ocean beneath the ice of Europa.
Jupiter's thin rings can be seen in some of the new pictures. Dust particles are flung into space when micrometeoroids crash into nearby moons. The rings were silhouetted against the sun by the Voyager craft in 1979.
The shadow of Jupiter's Great Red Spot can be seen just to the left. The storm is white because of how scientists processed the data.
"I couldn't believe that we saw everything so clearly, and how bright they were," said a planetary scientist. It's exciting to think that we have the ability to observe these types of objects in our solar system.
The new images were captured using a NearInfrared camera. The bands of Jupiter's atmosphere are clearly shown in the images that were captured. The above image shows Jupiter as a ball of light and went through a filter.
NASA focused the telescope on a distant star to make sure it could find stars in the background of Jupiter. The animation of Jupiter andEuropa was created.
"These images of Jupiter demonstrate the full grasp of what we can see from the faintest, most distant observable galaxies to planets in our own Cosmic backyard that you can see with the naked eye from your actual backyard," said a scientist.
This is just the beginning of what will happen over the course of the next few years. NASA wants to use a telescope to look at all the outer planets and their moons. That also includesEuropa. In the future, the JWST might be able to analyze light from water plumes shooting out of the underground ocean and into space. Scientists might be able to tell them about that ocean's composition.
"That's one of the cool things that we'll be able to do with this telescope in the solar system," he said.
Business Insider has an article on it.
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