A closer look of Jupiter's rings and moons is possible with NASA's James Webb Telescope
NASA has released the pictures of Jupiter, its moons and asteroids taken from the James Webb Space Telescope after giving a more in-depth look on the distant universe. In one of the official statement, NASA has mentioned about the new data which included pictures of Jupiter and pictures and spectra of many asteroids. Well, the pictures have provided a clearer look at Jupiter and its moons, along with Europa.
HIGHLIGHTS
- NASA'S James Webb Telescope captures Jupiter's rings and moons
- The telescope was designed to track slow moving objects
- It will bring valuable data with science instruments for objects
The image by the Webb Space Telescope highlights the distinct bands or rings a around the planet along with the Great Red Spot that was spotted on the giant planet. As per NASA, this could be a storm on Jupiter, that can be sufficient to swallow the whole Earth. With the help of the NIRCam instrument on the Webb Space Telescope the pictures are taken properly.
Bryan Holler, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who has helped to plan these observations has mentioned that “Combined with the deep field pictures which were released the other day, these pictures of Jupiter has demonstrated the full grasp of what Webb could observe, from the faintest, most distant observable galaxies to planets in our own cosmic backyard that you could be able to see with your naked eyes from your actual backyard.”
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Well, the images have also captured one of an asteroid known as 6481 Tenzing. The concept was to examine whether or not Webb might be able to track a fast moving object like a comet or asteroid. The asteroid is found between the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. As per NASA, the telescope was designed to trace slower moving objects like planets like Mars, at the time of commissioning, it has been able to get observations of asteroids “as a dot because all of them were found as small.”
Although, one should keep in mind that the image of the Great Red Spot seems white in the image because of the way the infrared image was processed. Jupiter’s Europa moon along with the Thebe and Metis were also noticed in another set of images. The Europa moon has been target as the NASA’s forthcoming Europa Clipper mission.
According to NASA's notes in the blog post, these pictures were seen as the “proof that Webb could completely observe the satellites and rings close to bright solar system objects like Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars.” It even notes that telescope had “easily captured a number of Jupiter’s rings.” Therefore, it is expected that the scientists would be able to use the Webb to examine if it would be possible to see the material spewing out of Jupiter’s Europa moon and Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
As per the great NASA, the “Webb could still get the valuable data with all of the science instruments for objects which would move up to 67 milliarcseconds per second, that is more then double the expected baseline.”
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