Take A Very Good Look At Jupiter And Its Rings, Thanks To James Webb
As the world marvels at the stunning first set of deep space images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA has also released a new batch of images captured during Webb’s early testing days, revealing a fresh look at Jupiter as well as the surrounding satellites and asteroids. While Jupiter may not sound fascinating to folks dreaming about finding life signatures there, the massive planet is brimming with mysteries.
Recent Hubble data revealed that the Great Red Spot, a massive storm raging for centuries on the planet, is actually picking up pace. Subsequent findings courtesy of the Juno probe divulged that the storm is much deeper than previously thought, and could extend anywhere between 300 to 500 kilometers beneath the clouds. To put that into perspective, if the storm were plucked from Jupiter and placed on the Earth’s surface, it would touch the International Space Station. It now appears that the Webb telescope is ready to untangle more cosmic threads surrounding the behemoth.
Related: What Is The Red Spot On Jupiter? The Planet's Great Red Spot, Explained
Amidst the debut of Webb's first set of cosmic captures, the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes has quietly released images of Jupiter and its neighbors, clicked during the telescope's commissioning phase. These images prominently show Jupiter and its Europa satellite, alongside the other two moons of the gas giant – Thebe and Metis. Aside from Jupiter's rings, the images also offered a spectacular infrared view of the planet's distinct bands and the Great Red Spot, which appears as a giant white eye in the new imagery. The key takeaway here is that the Webb telescope can “track solar system targets and produce
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