NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of Jupiter's moons, rings, and other features.
NASA has taken new telescopic images of Jupiter, revealing auroras, altitude levels, and cloud cover.
The latest photos, captured with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, show bands of blue and gray in the middle, with rainbow-colored hues at the planet's poles.
The telescope employs a camera with three filters that can map infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, to visible spectrum colours.
"To be honest, we didn't expect it to be this good," said Imke de Pater, a planetary astronomer and UC-Berkeley professor.
"It's truly amazing that we can see details on Jupiter, as well as its rings, tiny satellites, and even galaxies, all in one image."
The photos in red depict auroras, while the photos in yellow and green depict hazes swirling around the poles.
The white bands and spots depict cloud cover, including the Great Red Spot, a massive storm that NASA says "could swallow Earth."
"Because the brightness here indicates high altitude, the Great Red Spot, like the equatorial region, has high-altitude hazes,"
said Heidi Hammel, vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.
The numerous bright white'spots' and'streaks' are most likely high-altitude cloud tops from condensed convective storms.
Similarly, the darker areas have little cloud cover. Wider shots show the planet's rings and two moons, Amalthea and Adrastea.
See More Stories
Newzbetter
Click Here