The James Webb orbiting telescope took vivid pictures of Jupiter, its rings and three satellites

By: Maksim Panasovskyi | 15.07.2022, 17:28
The James Webb orbiting telescope took vivid pictures of Jupiter, its rings and three satellites

Following photographs of objects in the distant universe, NASA has published several more images taken with the James Webb Space Telescope.

What we know

Operators of the orbiting telescope showed pictures of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. The footage clearly shows three rings and three satellites.

The photos were taken with a near-infrared camera NIRCam. In the photo above you can see Jupiter itself. The photo was taken with a 2.12 μm filter. The big red spot in the case of infrared photography turned out to be white.

The photos show the three satellites of Jupiter: Europa, Thebes and Metida. According to scientists from NASA, using the new telescope can observe objects that are very close (relatively). In addition, if luck smiles, you can see signs of eruptions in the satellites, including the already mentioned Europa and Enceladus (the 6th largest satellite of Saturn).

The space agency stressed that the new telescope has a function to track the movement of objects in space. The system was calibrated with the asteroid 6481 Tenzing (animation below). As it became known, "James Webb" is capable of tracking objects whose angular velocity does not exceed 67 angular milliseconds per second.

Source: NASA