Overraskende detaljer springer ud i skarpe nye James Webb Space Telescope-billeder af Jupiter

De seneste billeder af Jupiter fra James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) er fantastiske.

Optaget den 27. juli viser de infrarøde billeder – kunstigt farvet for at få specifikke træk til at skille sig ud – fin filigran langs kanterne af de farvede bånd og rundt om Den Store Røde Plet og giver også en hidtil uset udsigt over nordlyset over nord- og sydpolen.

Ét bredfeltsbillede viser en unik opstilling af planeten, dens svage ringe og to af Jupiters mindre satellitter - Amalthea og Adrastea - mod en baggrund af galakser.

"Vi har aldrig set Jupiter sådan her. Det hele er ganske utroligt," sagde planetarisk astronom Imke de Pater, professor emerita fra University of California, Berkeley, som ledede de videnskabelige observationer af planeten sammen med Thierry Fouchet, en professor ved Paris Observatorium. "Vi havde egentlig ikke forventet, at det ville være så godt, for at være ærlig. Det er virkelig bemærkelsesværdigt, at vi kan se detaljer om Jupiter sammen med dens ringe, bittesmå satellitter og endda galakser på ét billede."

De Pater, Fouchet og deres team frigav billederne i dag (22. august) som en del af teleskopets Early Release Science-program.

In addition to the enormous storm referred to as the Great Red Spot, numerous storm systems—seen as small pallid ovals —are also visible, as are tiny bright plumes of cloud particles. The transition between organized zonal flows and the chaotic vortex patterns at higher latitudes is also clearly visible.

"Although we have seen many of these features on Jupiter before, JWST's infrared wavelengths give us a new perspective," said de Pater. "JWST's combination of images and spectra at near- and mid-infrared wavelengths will allow us to study the interplay of dynamics, chemistry and temperature structure in and above the Great Red Spot and the auroral regions."

Amalthea and Adrastea

JWST's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) also captured a wide-field view of Jupiter revealing its rings and two of its moons.

"This image illustrates the sensitivity and dynamic range of JWST's NIRCam instrument," Fouchet said. "It reveals the bright waves, swirls and vortices in Jupiter's atmosphere and simultaneously captures the dark ring system, 1 million times fainter than the planet, as well as the moons Amalthea and Adrastea, which are roughly 200 and 20 kilometers across, respectively. This one image sums up the science of our Jupiter system program, which studies the dynamics and chemistry of Jupiter itself, its rings and its satellite system."

The JWST images were processed with the help of citizen scientist Judy Schmidt of Modesto, California, who has worked with Hubble Space Telescope and other telescope images for the past 10 years, and Ricardo Hueso, who studies planetary atmospheres at the University of the Basque Country in Spain. Hueso is one of several coinvestigators on the Early Release Science (ERS) program, and is leading the NIRCam observations of Jupiter's atmosphere.

Schmidt's love of astronomy images has led her to process images of nebulae, globular clusters, stellar nurseries and more spectacular cosmic objects.

"Something about it just stuck with me, and I can't stop. I could spend hours and hours every day," she said. Her goal, she added, is to "… try to get it to look natural, even if it's not anything close to what your eye can see."

Spectroscopic observations of Jupiter's auroras are scheduled for later this year, while detailed spectroscopic observations of Jupiter's Great Red Spot were taken on July 27 in the near-infrared and August 14-15 at mid-infrared wavelengths. The Great Red Spot observations are a joint project between the Early Release Science (ERS) team—with de Pater and Fouchet as co-principal investigators—and a program of Solar System observations developed by Heidi Hammel of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), with the Jupiter observations led by Leigh Fletcher, a professor at the University of Leicester in England.

Other UC Berkeley members of the ERS team for Jupiter observations are research astronomer Mike Wong and postdoctoral fellow Ned Molter. + Udforsk yderligere

NASA releases Webb images of Jupiter