SCIENCE
By Shubhlogy
Image Source: NASA
With its first image of Neptune, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope demonstrates its capabilities closer to home. Webb's cameras not only captured the clearest view of this distant planet's rings in more than 30 years, but they also reveal the ice giant in a completely new light.
Webb's new image provides a clear view of the planet's rings, some of which have not been seen since NASA's Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to fly by Neptune in 1989. The Webb image clearly shows Neptune's fainter dust bands, in addition to several bright, narrow rings.
Webb captured seven of Neptune's 14 known moons: Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, Larissa, and Triton. Triton, Neptune's large and unusual moon, dominates this Webb portrait of Neptune as a very bright point of light with the signature diffraction spikes seen in many images.
Because of the chemical composition of its interior, this planet is classified as an ice giant. Neptune is much richer in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium than the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. This is readily apparent in Hubble Space Telescope images of Neptune at visible wavelengths, which is caused by small amounts of gaseous methane.
In this image, the thin bright line around the planet's equator could be a visual signature of the global atmospheric circulation that drives Neptune's winds and storms. As the atmosphere sinks and warms at the equator, it is brighter at infrared wavelengths than the cooler gas around it.
Image Source: NASA