Thanks to JWST, even our solar system’s most distant world is making its way back into the limelight. High-altitude methane ice, meanwhile, better reflects sunlight, resulting in the bright streaks and spots visible on Neptune’s disk in this shot. That’s how Neptune’s nitrogen-covered moon Triton, at top left, manages to outshine the giant planet. (According to recent research, Neptune’s turbulent atmosphere is more efficient at dispelling haze from its cloud tops, giving Neptune a deeper blue appearance than Uranus.)īecause methane gas strongly absorbs the wavelengths of light JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) is sensitive to (0.6 to 5 microns), Neptune appears surprisingly dim in the image above. Specifically, the ice giants have a relative surplus of gaseous methane, which gives them their characteristic blue hue in visual images like those captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The solar system’s ice giants - Neptune and Uranus - are richer in heavy molecules than the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, which are almost entirely composed of hydrogen and helium. “It has been three decades since we last saw those faint, dusty bands, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” said Heidi Hammel, a Neptune expert and JWST scientist, in a press release. Some of these rings are so faint that they haven’t been detected since NASA’s Voyager 2 probe became the first spacecraft to closely observe Neptune during its flyby in 1989. Proteus circles Neptune at a distance of about 92,800 kilometers (57,700 miles) above the cloud tops, and completes one orbit in 26 hours, 54 minutes. It wasnt discovered from Earth because it is so close to Neptune that it is lost in the glare of reflected sunlight. Neptune has a total of 6 ring systems surrounding it. Proteus is about 400 kilometers (250 miles) in diameter, larger than Nereid. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the new image is Neptune’s ethereal ring system. Neptune’s average surface temperatures are around -214 degrees Celsius / -353 degrees Fahrenheit. However, thanks to JWST’s space-based vantage point, impeccable stability, and impressively large (21-foot-diameter) primary mirror, the telescope was able to capture Neptune’s features with a clarity that hasn’t been achieved in more than 30 years. Located some 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth, Neptune, the solar system’s most distant planet, isn’t an easy world to photograph. Neptune’s delicate rings and even fainter dust bands come into clear focus in this recent image captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
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