The last time scientists caught such a clear glimpse of Neptune's rings was when Voyager 2 flew past the distant planet in 1989. Now the James Webb Space Telescope has delivered a crisp new image.
The telescope delivered an image of the ice giant Neptune as well as seven of 14 of the known moons orbiting the planet,"It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we've seen them in the infrared," said Heidi Hammel, a Neptune system expert and interdisciplinary scientist for the Webb project.
Neptune typically appears blue, attributed to methane in the atmosphere, but pictures from Webb's infrared camera show the planet whiter in color. The new photo shows thin lines of beautiful light around Neptune, which NASA says are high-altitude methane-ice clouds reflecting sunlight. Neptune typically appears blue in photographs due to methane gas in the atmosphere. This image of the ice giant was taken in 1989 by the Voyager 2, the only spacecraft to travel to the planet.
One of Neptune's moons, Triton, can also be seen in the photo. But, because of diffraction spikes in the image, one could easily mistake it for a distant star. Triton's surface is covered in frozen, condensed nitrogen, which reflects an average of 70% of the sun's rays, NASA said.became the first spacecraft to cruise by Neptune, located approximately 2.8 billion miles from Earth — more than 30 times the distance from Earth to the sun.
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