NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided a long-awaited glimpse of Neptune and revealed more information about its enigmatic storms. The clarity of the planet’s rings since 1989 stands out most in Webb’s latest photograph. A closer image was captured by NASA’s Voyager 2 during its approach in 1989. The Webb image vividly displays Neptune’s fainter dust bands in addition to many brilliant, narrow rings. (Photo: NASA)
Neptune has drawn the attention of scientists since its discovery in 1846. Neptune is 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth and circles in a lonely, darker area of the solar system. Neptune’s noons are comparable to dull twilights on Earth since the Sun is so tiny and feeble at that extreme distance. Neptune is substantially richer in elements heavier than hydrogen and helium than the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. Neptune’s large and strange moon, Triton, is shown in the picture. Triton reflects about 70 per cent of the sunlight it receives thanks to a frozen coating of condensed nitrogen covering it. It outshines Neptune significantly in this photograph as the planet’s atmosphere is darkened by methane absorption. (Photo: NASA)
The internal chemical composition of this planet qualifies it as an ice giant. Small concentrations of gaseous methane enable Neptune to appear characteristically blue in Hubble Space Telescope photos. The atmospheric circulation that fuels Neptune’s winds and storms may be visually identifiable as a thin line of brightness ringing the planet’s equator. At the equator, the atmosphere cools and descends, making it glow more brightly at infrared wavelengths than the cooler gases around it. A zoomed-out view of Neptune is shown in the picture. Neptune’s moon Triton, resembling a small teal snowflake, is the central focal point, with a tiny ringed, pearl-like Neptune below and to the right of it. The black background is filled with galaxies. (Photo: NASA)
Here are three photos of Neptune side by side. Neptune looks like a pearl with thin, concentric oval rings when viewed in infrared light. The first is captured by Voyager 2 in 1989 (going from left to right). It has a black background, a dark blue sphere and some pale blue or white streaks. The second is identified as a Hubble image from 2021. It is also a paler blue sphere set on a dark background. The third one is captured by Webb in 2022. In the coming years, more Webb observations of Triton and Neptune are anticipated. (Photo: NASA)
