With the help of a fresh set of images from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA has focused its most potent infrared eye on Jupiter.
The new observatory, which orbits the sun at a distance of about a million miles from Earth, demonstrated this week that it can look out over a distance of more than 13 billion light-years. In the far-off universe, they display countless galaxies, stars, and clouds of dust.
JWST can also capture images of nearby, more recognizable objects. Incredibly detailed new JWST photos of Jupiter were released by NASA on Thursday. The moons of the gas giant are called Metis, Thebe, and Europa. Deep beneath its thick ice cover, scientists believe Europa possesses a salty ocean that could contain extraterrestrial life.
Some of the latest pictures even show Jupiter's tiny rings. The dust that makes up the rings is launched into space when micrometeoroids collide with neighboring moons. Before the Voyager spacecraft passed Jupiter in 1979 and peered back, no one was aware that the rings even existed.
The shadow of Europa may be seen just to the left of Jupiter's renowned Great Red Spot, an anticyclone that might easily engulf Earth. Due to the way scientists used the infrared data the telescope returned, the storm is white in this image.
"I couldn't believe that we saw everything so clearly, and how bright they were," Stefanie Milam, a planetary scientist on NASA's JWST team, said in a blog post showing the images. "It's really exciting to think of the capability and opportunity that we have for observing these kinds of objects in our solar system."
The latest photos were taken by JWST using the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) filter. Using a filter for short wavelengths of light, the photographs of Jupiter's atmosphere that are plainly visible in bands were taken. Others were sent through a filter for long wavelengths, like the image of Jupiter above, which shows it as a ball of dazzling white light.
JWST's exploration of our solar system is only getting started. NASA intends to use the telescope to investigate many of the moons and all of the outer planets, starting with Mars. Including Europa. JWST may be able to examine the light of water plumes that Europa's subsurface ocean is spewing into space through her ice crust in the upcoming years. Scientists might be able to learn more about the ocean's makeup from those data.
