NASA’s mighty James Webb Space Telescope just delivered a picture that shows a side of Neptune you’ve probably never seen before: its rings.
The telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) was able to capture what NASA is calling the clearest view of the planet’s rings in more than 30 years. Moreover, the NIRCam was also able to pick up on dust bands around the planet, as well as bright methane-ice clouds reflecting sunlight.
Compare the image to this one taken from by Hubble in 2021, which relies on visible light wavelengths, and you can quickly see how much more powerful Webb is when compared to its decades-old counterpart. The older image of Neptune also shows it appearing blue while Webb’s shows the planet shimmering like a disco ball thanks to its infrared cameras.
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“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,” Heidi Hammel, a Neptune system expert and interdisciplinary scientist for the Webb, said in a press release. This marks the first time some of the rings have been spotted since Voyager 2 whizzed past the planet in 1989.
The picture also shows seven of Neptune’s 14 moons as they orbit the icy planet. In fact, its largest moon Triton appears as the brightest spot on the image due to how it reflects 70 percent of the sunlight that hits it.
Researchers aren’t done with either Neptune or its moons either. More observations of the planet and Triton are slated for the Webb in the next year. Astronomers hope that the orbital telescope can clue us in on the origins of Triton, which some believe is an errant space rock that was pulled into Neptune’s gravity.
