James Webb has captured its first photo of Mars alongside an atmosphere composition test, providing new data about our neighboring planet.
in the 2030s. Now that we have James Webb up and running, the world’s newest space telescope took a gander at the Red Planet, capturing Webb’s first photo of Mars and revealing more data about it in the process.blog post
this week. According to the author, Alise Fisher, James Webb captured its first image and spectra of Mars on September 5. Since then, scientists have been able to mull over the data captured, and compare it to data compiled by other spacecraft, rovers, and probes. What makes James Webb’s observations of Mars so important is that Webb’s location nearly a million miles away provides it with a great view of Mars’ observable disk. That means short-term phenomena like weather patterns, seasonal changes, and even dust storms can be investigated further. So, James Webb’s first photo of Mars is most likely just a start at observing the planet.
In the future, Webb may take a closer look at the planet, digging deeper into the phenomena that cover its surface. But, doing so isn’t easy. Because Mars is so close, it’s one of the brightest objects in the sky. As such, Webb faces some unusual challenges when observing it. To account for the brightness, astronomers use short exposures to capture Webb’s first photo of Mars.
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