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James Webb Space Telescope: Jupiter

EviLore

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member

Webb’s Jupiter Images Showcase Auroras, Hazes – James Webb Space Telescope

blogs.nasa.gov blogs.nasa.gov

JWST_2022-07-27_Jupiter.png


Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter from three filters – F360M (red), F212N (yellow-green), and F150W2 (cyan) – and alignment due to the planet’s rotation. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.

With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life.

“We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, professor emerita of the University of California, Berkeley. De Pater led the observations of Jupiter with Thierry Fouchet, a professor at the Paris Observatory, as part of an international collaboration for Webb’s Early Release Science program. Webb itself is an international mission led by NASA with its partners ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). “It’s really remarkable that we can see details on Jupiter together with its rings, tiny satellites, and even galaxies in one image,” she said.

The two images come from the observatory’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum. Generally, the longest wavelengths appear redder and the shortest wavelengths are shown as more blue. Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate the Webb data into images.

In the standalone view of Jupiter, created from a composite of several images from Webb, auroras extend to high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of Jupiter. The auroras shine in a filter that is mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. A different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. A third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a deeper main cloud.

The Great Red Spot, a famous storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds, because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight.

“The brightness here indicates high altitude – so the Great Red Spot has high-altitude hazes, as does the equatorial region,” said Heidi Hammel, Webb interdisciplinary scientist for solar system observations and vice president for science at AURA. “The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms.” By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover.
Click to expand...

JWST_2022-07-27_Jupiter_2color.png


JWST_2022-07-27_Jupiter_2color_labels-1.png


Webb NIRCam composite image from two filters – F212N (orange) and F335M (cyan) – of Jupiter system, unlabeled (top) and labeled (bottom). Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt.

In a wide-field view, Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea. The fuzzy spots in the lower background are likely galaxies “photobombing” this Jovian view.

“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,” Fouchet said. Researchers have already begun analyzing Webb data to get new science results about our solar system’s largest planet.

Data from telescopes like Webb doesn’t arrive on Earth neatly packaged. Instead, it contains information about the brightness of the light on Webb’s detectors. This information arrives at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), Webb’s mission and science operations center, as raw data. STScI processes the data into calibrated files for scientific analysis and delivers it to the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes for dissemination. Scientists then translate that information into images like these during the course of their research (here’s a podcast about that). While a team at STScI formally processes Webb images for official release, non-professional astronomers known as citizen scientists often dive into the public data archive to retrieve and process images, too.

Judy Schmidt of Modesto California, a longtime image processor in the citizen science community, processed these new views of Jupiter. For the image that includes the tiny satellites, she collaborated with Ricardo Hueso, a co-investigator on these observations, who studies planetary atmospheres at the University of the Basque Country in Spain.
Click to expand...
 
lachesis

lachesis

Member
I saw this yesterday - that someone wanted a print of it.
I thought it was kinda weird Jupiter picture, not realizing it's from Webb. My idea of Jupitor have been so "brown" for man years. ;)

Kinda interesting they are putting "nothern" and "southern". I mean, Jupiter has very strong magnetic field, I assume... which means it would have north and south - but wonder if that's the same "direction" one think of? Probably someone who is a lot smarter probably figured out whole direction thing in space - otherwise we would haven't been to get to the moon... but it just briefly stumbled me as "is that north same as our north".
 
Crayon

Crayon

Member
lachesis said:
I saw this yesterday - that someone wanted a print of it.
I thought it was kinda weird Jupiter picture, not realizing it's from Webb. My idea of Jupitor have been so "brown" for man years. ;)

Kinda interesting they are putting "nothern" and "southern". I mean, Jupiter has very strong magnetic field, I assume... which means it would have north and south - but wonder if that's the same "direction" one think of? Probably someone who is a lot smarter probably figured out whole direction thing in space - otherwise we would haven't been to get to the moon... but it just briefly stumbled me as "is that north same as our north".
Click to expand...

Most of the planets spin more or less on the plane of the solar system so I guess they just decide what's up and down based on that.
 
TheDreadBaron

TheDreadBaron

Gold Member
lachesis said:
I saw this yesterday - that someone wanted a print of it.
I thought it was kinda weird Jupiter picture, not realizing it's from Webb. My idea of Jupitor have been so "brown" for man years. ;)

Kinda interesting they are putting "nothern" and "southern". I mean, Jupiter has very strong magnetic field, I assume... which means it would have north and south - but wonder if that's the same "direction" one think of? Probably someone who is a lot smarter probably figured out whole direction thing in space - otherwise we would haven't been to get to the moon... but it just briefly stumbled me as "is that north same as our north".
Click to expand...
Yeah there’s different meanings for North. There’s magnetic north, and geographic north, and I’ve even heard that Earth’s magnetic “north” pole is technically the magnetic south pole because the north side of a magnetic compass is attracted to it. I would guess for other planets they typically refer to north as being centered around the spin axis and consistent with the plane of the solar system and earth’s north, but that’s just a guess.
 
MastaKiiLA

MastaKiiLA

Member
lachesis said:
I saw this yesterday - that someone wanted a print of it.
I thought it was kinda weird Jupiter picture, not realizing it's from Webb. My idea of Jupitor have been so "brown" for man years. ;)

Kinda interesting they are putting "nothern" and "southern". I mean, Jupiter has very strong magnetic field, I assume... which means it would have north and south - but wonder if that's the same "direction" one think of? Probably someone who is a lot smarter probably figured out whole direction thing in space - otherwise we would haven't been to get to the moon... but it just briefly stumbled me as "is that north same as our north".
Click to expand...
My understanding is that S is positive, and N is negative on a magnet. When drawn with arrows on the magnetic field, they go from south to north. But that is my understanding, and I don't feel like googling to see if I'm wrong.
 
Ozzy Onya A2Z

Ozzy Onya A2Z

Member
Fuck Jupiter. JW just found clouds on Saturn's moon Titan -

AA15gWtz.img


Evolution of clouds on Titan over 30 hours between November 4 and November 6, 2022, as seen by Webb NIRCam (left) and Keck NIRC-2 (right). Titan’s trailing hemisphere seen here is rotating from left (dawn) to right (evening) as seen from Earth and the Sun. Cloud A appears to be rotating into view while Cloud B appears to be either dissipating or moving behind Titan’s limb (around toward the hemisphere facing away from us).

© SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Webb Titan GTO Team IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Click to expand...
 
Pejo

Pejo

Member
German Hops said:
I can't tell what I'm looking at.
Uranus is the middle, surrounded by rings?
Click to expand...
Here's a writeup about it:

www.nasa.gov

NASA’s Webb Scores Another Ringed World With New Image of Uranus - NASA

Following in the footsteps of the Neptune image released in 2022, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken a stunning image of the solar system’s other ice giant, the planet Uranus. The new image features dramatic rings as well as bright features in the planet’s atmosphere.
www.nasa.gov www.nasa.gov

But yes, you're right.
 
D

DosGamer

Member
German Hops said:
I can't tell what I'm looking at.
Uranus is the middle, surrounded by rings?
Click to expand...
I can try to explain it...
You know when you see pictures of Saturn, you see the rings around it... Well Uranus has rings as well, but instead of spinning around like Saturn does, it spins on its side thus making it look odd. Think for of a top down perspective instead of a side view.
 
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