CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Neptune and its rings haven’t seemed this good in a long time.
NASA launched new glamour pictures of our photo voltaic system’s outermost planet Wednesday taken by the James Webb Area Telescope. The images taken in July present not solely Neptune’s skinny rings, however its faint mud bands, by no means earlier than noticed within the infrared, in addition to seven of its 14 identified moons.
Webb confirmed Jupiter at its finest in a collection of contemporary images launched final month.
Launched lower than a yr in the past, the $10 billion Webb is spending most of its time peering a lot deeper into the universe. Astronomers hope to see again to nearly the start of time when the primary stars and galaxies had been forming.
NASA’s Voyager 2 was the primary spacecraft to see Neptune in all its gaseous glory, throughout a 1989 flyby. No different spacecraft have visited the icy, blue planet. So it’s been three a long time since astronomers final noticed these rings with such element and readability, stated the Area Science Institute’s Heidi Hammel, a planetary astronomer working with Webb.
Hammel tweeted that she wept when she noticed the rings, yelling and making “my youngsters, my mother, even my cats look.”
Webb is the world’s greatest, strongest telescope, working 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth. It rocketed into area final December.
The observatory is in good well being, based on NASA, apart from one merchandise.
NASA reported this week {that a} mechanism on one among Webb’s devices confirmed indicators of elevated friction late final month in one among 4 observing modes. Observations are on maintain on this one specific observing monitor, as a evaluate board decides on a path ahead.
The Related Press Well being and Science Division receives help from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Division of Science Training. The AP is solely chargeable for all content material.
(function () {
'use strict';
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function () {
document.body.addEventListener('click', function(event) {
fbq('track', "Click");
});
});
})();
Source link