Webb Telescope’s ‘Absolutely Astonishing’ New Photo Album Of Jupiter Shows The Giant Planet As We’ve Never Seen It Before
Jupiter, center, and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam … [+]
Days after dropping its first five incredible new images, the revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has produced an incredible image of the planet Jupiter, its moons—and even its rings.
We’re used to seeing jaw-dropping close-ups every six weeks from NASA’s Juno spacecraft currently in orbit, but Webb’s captures are something new.
The image, above, was part of Webb data released on the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes. Also included were images of Jupiter’s moons and even its delicate rings, captured to test the telescope’s instruments before science operations officially began July 12, 2022.
The Jupiter image from Webb’s NIRCam instrument (main article image, above) shows three incredible objects and features in and around the giant planet:
1. Its moon Europa
Easily seen on the left is Europa, a moon thought to have an ocean below its thick icy crust that could host life. Europa’s shadow can be seen to the left of the Great Red Spot. Other visible moons in these images include Thebe and Metis.
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will launch in October 2024 and arrive in late 2027 to perform about 45 flybys, in each pass photographing the moon’s icy surface in high resolution. It may help improve estimates for oxygen and other ingredients for life on the icy moon. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) will launch in May 2022, arrive in 2029 and take three and a half years to examine Europa as well as two of Jupiter’s other Galilean moons, Ganymede and Callisto.
2. Its ‘Great Red Spot’ storm
The Great Red Spot is a 400-years old storm that used to be twice the size of Earth. Rolling counterclockwise between two bands of clouds that are moving in opposite directions toward it, the Great Red Spot is still the biggest in the solar system by far. Its winds are as fast as 425 miles per hour. The iconic spot appears white in this image because of the way Webb’s infrared image was processed.
3. Bands in its clouds
The NIRCam instrument’s short-wavelength filter shows distinct bands that encircle the planet.
However, another image shows something even more spectacular:
Jupiter has rings!
Jupiter and some of its moons—and its rings—are seen through NIRCam’s 3.23 micron filter.
The above image from Webb’s NIRcam long-wavelength filter also reveals the giant planet’s rings—just like the famously “ringed planet” Saturn. This has been known since 1979 when NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft imaged them, but they are rarely captured. Data from the Galileo spacecraft that orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003 confirmed that these rings were created by meteoroid impacts on small nearby moons.
That Jupiter’s rings show up in one of Webb’s first solar system images is “absolutely astonishing and amazing,” said Stefanie Milam, Webb’s deputy project scientist for planetary science based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.“ I couldn’t believe that we saw everything so clearly, and how bright they were … it’s really exciting to think of the capability and opportunity that we have for observing these kinds of objects in our solar system.”
Two more new views of Jupiter
Left: Jupiter, center, and its moons Europa, Thebe, and Metis are seen through the James Webb Space … [+]
These two more new views of Jupiter through two different filters show even more moons:
Above, left: Jupiter, center, and its moons Europa, Thebe, and Metis are seen through the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam instrument 2.12 micron filter.
Above, right: Jupiter and Europa, Thebe and Metis are seen through NIRCam’s 3.23 micron filter.
How significant are Webb’s first images of Jupiter?
“Combined with the deep field images released the other day, these images of Jupiter demonstrate the full grasp of what Webb can observe, from the faintest, most distant observable galaxies to planets in our own cosmic backyard that you can see with the naked eye from your actual backyard,” said Bryan Holler, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who helped plan these observations.
“The Jupiter images in the narrow-band filters were designed to provide nice images of the entire disk of the planet, but the wealth of additional information about very faint objects (Metis, Thebe, the main ring, hazes) in those images with approximately one-minute exposures was absolutely a very pleasant surprise,” said John Stansberry, observatory scientist and NIRCam commissioning lead at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Hubble’s September 4, 2021 photo of Jupiter displays the ever-changing landscape of its turbulent … [+]
Hubble’s most recent Jupiter portrait
Each year the Hubble Space Telescope—which remains of critical importance despite Webb’s “first light”—issues an image of Jupiter and Saturn taken as part of its Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program. It typically images the two giant outer planets when they reach “opposition, which is the date Earth is between that planet and the Sun.
Opposition is when each planet is at its biggest, brightest and best, rising in the east at dusk and sitting in the west at dawn.
Jupiter will next reach opposition on September 26, with Saturn doing so very soon on August 14, 2022. The next close-ups of Jupiter from NASA’s Juno spacecraft are due just after its next perijiove close flyby on August 19, 2022.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
