New Delhi, Aug 24 : NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured stunning new images of Jupiter that will provide scientists more clues about the planet’s life inside.With massive storms, powerful auroras, strong winds as well as extreme temperature and pressure conditions Jupiter is a busy place.
In the view of the planet of Jupiter made by a combination of multiple images from Webb auroras can be seen reaching high altitudes, above both the southern and northern poles of Jupiter.
Auroras sparkle in filters that are colored to redder hues that also highlight the light reflected by upper and lower hazes as well as clouds, NASA said in a statement.
A different filter, which is mapped to greens and yellows, shows hazes circling the poles of the northern and southern.The third filter, which is mapped to blues, reveals the light reflected off of a larger main cloud.
“We did not expect it to be this amazing sincere.It’s quite amazing that we can see the details on Jupiter as well with its rings, small satellites and galaxies in one image,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, professor emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley.
The Great Red Spot, a famous storm that could take over Earth and appear white in these images as do other clouds because they reflect lots of sunlight.
“The brightness here is indicative of high altitude.
Therefore, it is likely that the Great Red Spot has high-altitude fogs, and so is the equatorial region” explained Heidi Hammel, Webb interdisciplinary scientist responsible for solar system observations.
In a wide-field image, Webb sees Jupiter with its tiny rings that are one million times smaller than the planet and two moons known as Amalthea and Adrastea.
“This one image summarizes the research of our Jupiter system program which examines the dynamics and chemical properties of Jupiter itself its rings, the satellites that orbit it,” explained Thierry Fouchet who is a professor at the Paris Observatory.
The $10 billion Webb telescope is a multi-national program run by NASA, European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.
The objective of the telescope is to unravel the questions in our solar system.explore distant worlds surrounding other stars and explore the mysterious structures and the origins of our universe as well as our position in it.
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