NASA has captured the clearest picture of Neptune and its rings in the past 30 years

Stunning images of the ice giant were captured by the new James Webb Space Telescope.

Neptune Reappears thanks to James Webb Space TelescopeWhich captured the clearest view of its rings over thirty years ago and seven of its many moons.

The new infrared telescope’s vision reveals it Ice giant in a whole new lightconfirmed in a note by the European Space Agency (ESA), which is involved in James Webb along with the US NASA and the Canadian Space Agency.

The pictures give a clear view of its episodes, including: Some have not seen each other yet Others have not been captured in this level of detail since the space probe Voyager 2 It was closer to the planet in 1989, and clearly shows the faint dust lanes surrounding the planet.


The stunning image obtained from NASA on September 21, 2022 and taken by the James Webb Space Telescope shows Neptune’s rings and a series of bright spots in the planet’s southern hemisphere that represent high-altitude methane ice. Photo: AFP

Neptune was discovered in 1846, It is thirty times farther from the sun than the Earth and orbits in one of the darkest parts of the solar system. Noon there is like a faint twilight on Earth, the European Space Agency reports.

web too It captured seven of the fourteen known moons From Neptune and in the photo you can see a very bright spot of light with characteristic diffraction peaks that appear in many telescope images, but it is not a star, but the most unusual moon on the planet, Triton.

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covered with an icy sheen of condensed nitrogen, Triton reflects an average of 70% of sunlight reach it, even bypassing Neptune, because the planet’s atmosphere is opaque by absorbing methane at Webb wavelengths

Another image taken by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, Neptune and seven of its 14 known moons, including Triton, shows the bright point of light in the upper left of this image.  Photo: AFP
Another image taken by the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, Neptune and seven of its 14 known moons, including Triton, shows the bright point of light in the upper left of this image. Photo: AFP

Triton has a stranger retrograde orbit around neptunewhich led astronomers to speculate that this moon was in fact an object in the Kuiper Belt that was captured by the planet by gravity.

It is scheduled to next year Additional studies are being conducted Triton and Neptune, remember the ESA note.

Neptune is characterized as ice giant Due to the chemical composition of its interior, which is manifested in the characteristic blue appearance of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope – the predecessor of James Webb – at visible wavelengths, caused by small amounts of methane.

In web photos and thanks to his infrared camera, Neptune is not shown in blue. In addition, a thin line of brightness is observed around the planet’s equator, which could be a visual sign of global atmospheric circulation driving the planet’s winds and storms.

The 164 years Neptune means its north pole is out of astronomers’ sight, but Webb’s images indicate an interesting glow in that region.

The previously known Antarctic vortex appears from Webb’s view, but is revealed for the first time Continuous squad of clouds which surrounds it.

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Lovell Loxley

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