Source: USA TODAY
The James Webb Telescope has taken some of the clearest images beyond the Milky Way, but its most recent photos took a very detailed look at the king of our solar system – Jupiter.
The images, released by NASA on Monday, were taken using the telescope’s near-infrared camera, which has three infrared filters “that showcase details of the planet” that can’t be seen by the human eye.
The first image released is a collection of images taken from Jupiter against the darkness of space. The red and orange glow at the top and bottom of the planet show the auroras at the northern and southern poles, with green and yellow hazes swirling around. The rest of the enormous planet has blue shades to show light is reflected from a deeper main cloud, NASA says.
Also viewable is Jupiter’s infamous Great Red Spot. The storm, which has a bigger diameter than Earth and can produce winds over 400 miles per hour, is white because the clouds are reflecting a substantial amount of sunlight.
“The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms,” Heidi Hammel, Webb interdisciplinary scientist for solar system observations and vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, said in a statement.
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