The latest pictures taken by the James Webb Space Telescope show that it can see more than just things in space that are far away from Earth. NASA has shown off Webb’s first pictures of our own solar system, which include pictures of Jupiter and asteroids spinning around. Mashable says that these pictures were taken by engineers when the instruments at the observatory were being checked out. The pictures show that Webb can pick up on fainter objects and see more detail than ever before about moving objects close to Earth. Webb was able to do this because the telescope has sensors that help it point, hold, and move in the right direction.
Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said that NASA officials debated including local targets in the first set of stunning photos from far away, but in the end, they went with the safer option. “We didn’t want to have to depend on the moving target observations working, and we didn’t want to make things too hard,” he said. “As it turns out, we might have been able to do it.”
NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency released the first set of Webb’s full-color scientific photos just two days ago. Since then, more images have been shown. The event marked the start of science work for the $10 billion telescope. Astronomers say that Webb will start a golden age in the study of the universe.
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NASA says that the new images of Jupiter don’t look as bright as the ones we saw on Tuesday because they were not processed in the same way. Instead, they look more like photographs with a sepia tone. These were made to show off particular qualities. NASA says that the Great Red Spot is a long-lasting storm that is big enough to “swallow the Earth.” It can be seen in one picture from the telescope’s near-infrared camera. One of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, casts a shadow to the left of the spot.
Thebe and Metis are some of the other moons in these pictures. The U.S. space agency said that all of these details were taken in about a minute.
Scientists are glad the James Webb Space Telescope did well on its vision test. Astronomers are also excited to look into the vapor plumes coming from Europa and Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that could have oceans.
The team also wanted to know how fast an object could move and still be seen by the telescope. This is important for astronomers who want to study flying space rocks. Engineers tried to track an asteroid called 6481 Tenzing in the main asteroid belt, which is between Mars and Jupiter. They did this to see how far Webb could go. They didn’t feel let down. Jane Rigby, a project scientist at NASA, said, “We had a speed limit of 30 milliarcseconds per second, which is as fast as Mars can go.” “We were able to get through it. We were able to get the speed limit raised to 67, which means we can track targets faster than we said we would.”