Jupiter, center, and its moon Europa, left, are seen through the Webb Telescope’s NIRCam instrument. (NASA, ESA, CSA, B. Holler, J. Stansberry, STScI)
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ATLANTA — The first stunning images of the distant universe from the James Webb Space Telescope have been followed by something a little closer to home.
The data collected during the telescope’s commissioning period, before its scientific operations officially began on July 12, was published on the Space Telescope Science Institute website. The publicly available data is now ready for study by scientists around the world.
This data includes new images of Jupiter that were taken while the space observatory’s instruments were still being tested.
“Combined with the deep-field images released the other day, these images of Jupiter demonstrate the full picture of what Webb can observe, from the faintest, most distant galaxies visible to the planets in our own space yard that you can see with the naked eye from your actual backyard,” Brian Holler, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said in a statement.
Holler helped plan the observations.
Webb is an infrared telescope, so it captures light that is invisible to the human eye. One of Webb’s images of Jupiter shows the giant planet’s telltale atmospheric streaks, as well as the Great Red Spot.
This famous feature is a massive storm about twice the size of Earth that has been raging for over a century. It appears white in the image due to the infrared image processing.
Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, is visible to the left of the planet. The moon’s shadow also makes a cameo to the left of the Great Red Spot.
“I couldn’t believe we saw everything so clearly and how bright they were,” Stephanie Milam, Webb’s associate planetary science project scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.
“It’s really exciting to think about the possibilities and opportunities we have to observe these types of objects in our solar system.”
Some of the telescope’s other views of Jupiter revealed some of the planet’s faint rings. The images prove that Webb can observe faint details and objects near bright planets like Jupiter and Saturn.
I couldn’t believe we could see everything so clearly and how bright they were.
– Stephanie Milam, Webb Associate Project Scientist for Planetary Sciences
This is particularly exciting because it means Webb can also observe clouds of material ejected into space from ocean worlds in our solar system, such as Europa or Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
“We will look at our own solar system with new infrared eyes, searching for chemical traces of our history and tracking mysteries such as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, the composition of Europa’s icy ocean and the atmosphere of Saturn’s giant moon Titan,” he said in a statement. John Mather, senior Webb project scientist at NASA Goddard.
The first images were awaited by Mather for 25 years. “What next? All tools work, better than we hoped and promised. Scientific observations proposed years ago are being made as we speak,” Mather said.
“We want to know: Where did we come from? What happened after the big bang to create galaxies, stars and black holes? We have predictions and guesses, but astronomy is an observational science full of surprises.”
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