James Webb telescope provides breathtaking views of Jupiter that have never before been seen.
The storms, moon, and encircling rings of the largest planet are seen in never-before-seen detail in the infrared photos, which were obtained in July. The largest and newest space telescope in the world is providing a new perspective on Jupiter, complete with auroras.
On Monday, images of the largest planet in the solar system were made public by scientists.
The images were taken in July by the James Webb space telescope and provide the first-ever views of Jupiter's polar haze and northern and southern lights.
Alongside innumerable smaller storms, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a storm large enough to consume Earth, stands out prominently. A wide-field image that displays the planet's weak rings and two tiny moons against a sparkling background of galaxies is especially striking.
We have never witnessed Jupiter in this way. Planetary astronomer Imke de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley said in a statement, "It's all rather unbelievable. She helped lead the observation. To be honest, "We hadn't really expected it to be this fantastic."
According to the US-French research team, the infrared images were artificially coloured in blue, white, green, yellow, and orange to highlight the features.
The $10 billion successor to the Hubble space telescope, launched by Nasa and the European Space Agency, has been monitoring the cosmos in the infrared since the summer. With Webb, astronomers aim to see the beginning of the universe, looking back to 13.7 billion years ago, when the first stars and galaxies were formed.
The distance between the Earth and the telescope is one mile (1.6 km).