![]() Even further to the left, a brighter point of light is the moon Amalthea, an oddly-shaped reddish ball of ice and minerals. Some of the dust may also come from moons like Adrastea, which shows up as a bright dot at the far left tip of the rings in the Webb wide field image. In particular, they want to understand where the dust that forms the rings actually comes from it's probably from small moonlets orbiting close to Jupiter. Planetary scientist Imke de Pater and her colleagues plan to study Jupiter's rings in more detail. Imaging Jupiter's rings is no easy feat they're made of tiny particles that don't reflect much sunlight as a result, the rings are about a million times fainter than the light reflected from the gas giant itself. In the image, you can see the faint, delicate lines of Jupiter's rings stretching out to either side of the planet. Jupiter is pale and mysterious in this false-color Webb image. Webb's image processing team combined another set of NIRCam images, using just two of the instrument's filters, into a wider view of Jupiter, its nearly-invisible rings, and two of its small inner moons. "Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate the Webb data into images," says the ESA in a statement. The image you see is actually a composite of several images taken with NIRCam, using all three of the instrument's infrared filters to focus on different wavelengths of light. And the iconic Great Red Spot, a gargantuan storm just south of Jupiter's equator, reflects sunlight so brightly that it glows white. Other clouds, deeper in the planet's atmosphere, show up in shades of blue. Jupiter's version could swallow up our entire planet.īeneath the immense glow of Jupiter's aurorae, the upper atmosphere around Jupiter's poles is hazy, reflecting light in wavelengths that translate to greens and yellows in the composite image. Those molecules release that extra energy as light, creating dancing streamers of light in the sky. When a solar storm strikes a planet, streams of electrons pelt the planet's atmosphere, energizing molecules there. ![]() Jupiter's aurorae are huge versions of the phenomenon that creates both the Northern and Southern Lights here on Earth. Webb’s image processing team combined several images from the NIRCam instrument to produce this stunning view of our solar system’s largest planet. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |