The International Space Telescope James Webb captured new images of Jupiter, The largest planet in the solar system. And the US space agency NASA published the pictures on Monday morning (22).
In July, the space agency released the first infrared recordings of the planetThis time, however, the massive star was seen through the telescope’s three filters highlighting its different color bands.
In the new images, it is also possible to see some of the planet’s moons, their rings and big red spotwhich appears as a large circular white dot in the lower right corner (the stain is actually a storm large enough to swallow a landIt appears white in the image because it reflects sunlight.
(video: See the first images released by the James Webb Super Telescope.)
The new images surprised scientists: “We didn’t expect it to be this good, frankly,” said planetary astronomer Emke De Pater, professor at the University of California, Berkeley (USA).
See the first images released by the James Webb Super Telescope.
Jupiter, its moons and rings as seen by the James Webb Super Telescope – Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; Image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt.
Records were produced by Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) The observatory, which has three infrared filters that showed the details of the planet. NASA explains that because infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the scientists then translated this data into the visible spectrum.
The agency also revealed that the person responsible for this translation is young scientist Judy Schmidt, who has processed these new Jupiter records with other experts.
Schmidt has no formal training in astronomy, but he has a deep interest in the field. 10 years ago, the young woman took part in a European Space Agency (ESA) competition that sparked her “insatiable” passion for image processing.
Young scientist Judy Schmidt is an example of her work in processing astronomical images. Photo: NASA/Disclosure
Since the ESA competition, she’s been processing images from the “big cousin of the Web,” the Hubble telescope (the image above shows a planetary nebula captured by the satellite), and other data from space observatories as a bit of a hobby.
“Something about this has stuck with my mind and I haven’t been able to stop since,” she said in a statement. “I can spend hours and hours every day [trabalhando com isso]”.
According to NASA, Webb’s observations of Jupiter will give astronomers more clues about the gas giant.
“It’s really amazing to be able to see the details of Jupiter, such as its rings, small moons, and even galaxies in one image,” Butter added.
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