James Webb Space Telescope reveals auroras on Jupiter
NASA has published new images from the James Webb Space Telescope. They show auroras over Jupiter's north and south poles - in impressive detail.
"To be honest, we didn't really expect it to be this good." Astronomer Imke de Pater is apparently surprised herself at the quality of the new images. The Berkeley University professor emerita led the observations of Jupiter as part of an international collaboration. NASA writes this on its blog.
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The images released Monday show auroras at high altitudes over Jupiter's north and south poles. They are created from several composite images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). As with all infrared images, the wavelengths invisible to the human eye were assigned normal colours in the image development. Longer light waves were converted to red, shorter ones to blue.
Source: NASA
This is why the auroras glow red in the colourful version of the image. The haze swirling around the poles is coloured in shades of green and yellow. A third filter, assigned to blue, shows light reflected from a deeper main cloud. Finally, the white spot is the largest whirlwind in our solar system - it could swallow the entire Earth.
My fingerprint often changes so drastically that my MacBook doesn't recognise it anymore. The reason? If I'm not clinging to a monitor or camera, I'm probably clinging to a rockface by the tips of my fingers.