These are the amazing auroras of Jupiter captured by the James Webb Telescope

Jupiter It is the largest planet in the world Solar System. It is similar to a star, but has not become massive enough to start burning. It is covered with strips of swirling clouds. It has powerful storms like the Great Red Spot, which have lasted for hundreds of years. Now thanks to the new James Webb Space Telescope managed to catch Shocking images of auroras and extreme conditions of temperature and pressure on this “giant” planet.

Webb is the most powerful and complex space telescope in the history of astronomy. It is part of an international program led by the US Space Agency and with its partners, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency.

“We didn’t expect it to be this good and honest.”Planetary astronomer said Emkey D ButterProfessor Emeritus University of California at Berkeley. De Pater led the observation of Jupiter with Thierry Foucher, a professor at the Paris Observatory, as part of the Webb Early Release Science international collaboration. “It’s really cool to see the details of Jupiter with its rings, small moons and even galaxies in one picture,” said the expert.

The telescope took pictures with the near-infrared camera (NIRCam). This camera has three specialized infrared filters that display the details of the planet. Since infrared light is not visible to the human eye, the light has been mapped to the visible spectrum. In general, longer wavelengths appear redder and shorter wavelengths appear bluer. To translate Web data into images, the scientists teamed up with Judy Schmidt, an amateur astronomer with the American Planetary Society.

In the standalone view of Jupiter, created from a composite of several web images, The aurora borealis spread high above the north and south poles of Jupiter. The aurora borealis glow in a redder-colored filter, which also highlights reflected light from lower clouds and upper fog. A different filter, set in yellow and green, shows haze swirling around the north and south poles. The third filter, set to blue, shows light reflected from a deeper main cloud.

The Great Red Spot, the famous storm that might swallow the Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds, because it reflects so much sunlight. “The glare here indicates a high altitude The Great Red Spot has high-altitude haze, as does the equatorial region, said Heidi Hamill, a multidisciplinary web scientist for solar system observations and vice president of science at AURA.

“The bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely high-altitude cloud tops from intense convective storms.” In contrast, the dark belts north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover. From a wide-angle perspective, the Webb telescope makes it possible to see Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two small moons called Amalthea and Adraste. The scattered spots in the lower background are likely galaxies that have “slithered” into Jupiter’s view.

“This image summarizes the science of the Jupiter system program, which studies the dynamics and chemistry of Jupiter itself, its rings, and its satellite system.”Fauchette said. Researchers have already begun to analyze Webb data for new scientific findings on the largest planet in our solar system.

Data from telescopes like Webb not reaching Earth is neatly packed. Instead, it contains information about the brightness of the light in telescope detectors. This information arrives at the Space Telescope Science Institute, Webb’s mission science and operations center, in the form of raw data. This center processes the data into calibrated files for scientific analysis and delivers them to the Mikulski Space Telescope Archive for publication.

The scientists then translate this information into pictures. While a team at STScI formally processes Webb’s images for official publication, non-professional astronomers, now known as “citizen scientists,” often dive into public data archives to retrieve and process the images as well.

Schmidt lives in Modesto, California, and has been processing images in the amateur astronomy community for a long time. We’ve handled these new buyer notes. For the image that includes the micro-satellite, he collaborated with Ricardo Huesoco-author of these observations, studies the atmospheres of planets at the University of the Basque Country in Spain.

Schmidt has no academic background in astronomy. But 10 years ago, a European agency contest ignited his insatiable passion for image manipulation. The Hubble Hidden Treasures competition invited the public to find new gems in the Hubble data. Out of nearly 3,000 entries, Schmidt took third place for a photo of a newborn star. “Something is stuck in me and I can’t stop. I could have spent hours and hours every day” NASA Blog.

Her love of astronomical images led her to treat images of nebulae, globular clusters, stellar nurseries, and the most amazing cosmic objects. His philosophy is: “I try to make it look natural, even if it’s not like what the eye can see.” These images have attracted the attention of professional scientists, including Hummel, who previously collaborated with Schmidt on improving Hubble images of the impact of Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 on Jupiter.

it is expected that The Webb Telescope provides observations of all phases of cosmic history. Schmidt hopes to be amazed at star-forming regions. “I’m really looking forward to seeing these weird and wonderful little stars spiking holes in nebulae,” he said.

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