[imagesource: NASA / JPL]

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been spending a lot of time peering into deep space and providing copious amounts of unprecedented data and imagery never seen before.

At least we have another, more exciting use for the word unprecedented now.

More recently, though, the JWST cast its infrared eye closer to home, in our solar system, capturing an image of a luminous Neptune and its delicate, dusty rings in striking detail.

We’ve only ever seen this icy giant in great detail when NASA’s Voyager 2 became the first and only space probe to fly past it for just a few hours in 1989.

That’s the image you see up top. Neptune is known to be blue, thanks to the methane present in its atmosphere.

In reality, it’s a little more pearly:

Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI via AP

Mark McCaughrean, a senior adviser for science and exploration at the European Space Agency, said that Webb’s unprecedented infrared imaging capability has provided a new glimpse into Neptune’s atmosphere, per The Guardian:

The telescope “takes all that glare and background away” so that “we can start to tease out the atmospheric composition” of the planet, said McCaughrean, who has worked on the Webb project for more than 20 years.

…“The rings are more reflective in the infrared,” McCaughrean said, “so they’re much easier to see.”

An “intriguing brightness” near the top of Neptune has also been spotted. This is a compelling view because astronomers can’t usually see the north pole so easily as the planet is tilted away from Earth and takes 164 years to orbit the sun.

Another reason why this imaging is thrilling is that it shows a great view of the planet’s seven out of 14 known moons:

Looming over Neptune in a zoomed-out image is what appears to be a very bright spiky star, but is in fact Triton, Neptune’s strange, huge moon haloed with Webb’s famed diffraction spikes.

Image: Space Telescope Science Institut/ESA/Webb/AFP/Getty Images

Triton, which is larger than dwarf planet Pluto, appears brighter than Neptune because it is covered in ice, which reflects light. Neptune meanwhile “absorbs most of the light falling on it”, McCaughrean said.

HuffPost reported that because it’s been about three decades since astronomers last saw this planet in great detail and clarity, the Space Science Institute’s Heidi Hammel, a planetary astronomer working with Webb, wept when she saw Neptune’s rings.

Finding such a massive pearl in the sky is tear-jerking, sure.

More research based on Webb’s observations of Neptune and Triton is expected in the next year.

[sources:guardian&huffpost]