Tag: jupiter

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Captures Its First Images of Mars, Reveals Intriguing Details

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, known for capturing some incredible images of the universe, has presented us with new pictures of our neighbouring planet, Mars. The telescope captured its first images and spectra of Mars on September 5. The James Webb Space Telescope, an international collaboration between NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency), was launched in December 2021. Last month, the telescope gave us a detailed view of the Jupiter, showcasing auroras and rings surrounding the planet.

In an official blog today, NASA shared the news showcasing the Webb Telescope‘s first images of the red planet. According to NASA‘s tweet on the telescope’s official Twitter handle, one of the close-up images gives details about the Huygens Crater, dark volcanic Syrtis Major and Hellas Basin.

Webb’s first images of Mars are captured by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). These images show a region of the planet’s eastern hemisphere at two different wavelengths or colours of infrared light.

According to NASA, the Mars team will use this imaging and spectroscopic data to explore regional differences across the planet in the future. They will also look out for traces of different gases in the planet’s atmosphere.

Last month, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured some intriguing photos of Jupiter, featuring some magnificent auroras on the planet. These images were also clicked using the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) of the observatory.

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NASA’s Juno Mission Captures Huge Storms on Jupiter’s Surface

The Juno Jupiter mission of US space agency NASA has completed its 43rd close flyby of the biggest planet of our solar system. And, in the process, it has delivered a phenomenal picture of the surface. The shot features fascinating vortices or hurricane-like spiral wind patterns forming near Jupiter’s north pole. The Juno mission flew past close to Jupiter on July 5 this year. It clicked the striking photo using its JunoCam instrument.

While the storms look enchanting in the picture, they can be quite powerful and massive with a height of 50 kilometres and spread hundreds of miles across the planet. They also hold vital information about Jupiter‘s atmosphere. Studying their formation can give scientists an insight into the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry that create Jupiter’s other atmospheric features.

Check out the image below, posted by NASA on Twitter:

Scientists will be analysing the different shapes, colours, and sizes of the vortices seen on the planet. The difference in colour and shape is also seen in the cyclones that form on Earth. For instance, cyclones which spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern hemisphere and anti-cyclones which behave the other way differ in colour and shape.

NASA has launched a citizen science project called Jovian Vortex Hunter which allows people to locate vortices in the picture and help the space agency categorise them.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft left for its five-year journey on August 5, 2011, and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016. It took five years to reach the planet and entered the 53-day polar orbit stretching from above the planet’s cloud tops to the outer reaches of the Jovian magnetosphere.

Juno collected a trove of data during its initial 35 orbits and captured breathtaking views of Jupiter and its satellites. Now, Juno is on its extended mission and will continue to investigate Jupiter through September 2025 or until the end of its life.

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Thrilling New Images of Jupiter Captured by James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope’s latest photographs demonstrate that it is capable of seeing more than just cosmic objects that are far away from Earth. NASA has unveiled Webb’s first images of our own solar system, which include shots of Jupiter and whirling asteroids. According to Mashable, these images were taken by engineers when the observatory’s instruments were being tested. The pictures show that Webb is capable of picking up fainter objects while also seeing unparalleled detail on moving objects that are near Earth. The guiding sensors of the telescope, which enable Webb to point, hold, and track with accuracy, are to thank for this achievement.

According to Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, NASA officials debated putting the local targets in the initial batch of breathtaking far-space photographs but ultimately chose the more cautious course. “We didn’t want to have to count on the moving target observations working, with keeping things not too complicated,” he said. “As it actually turns out, we probably could have done it.”

After the first set of Webb’s full-colour scientific photographs were unveiled by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency just two days prior, further images were released. For the $10 billion telescope, the occasion marked the start of science operations. Webb is expected to start a golden era in the study of the cosmos, according to astronomers.

The reason the Jupiter images don’t look as vibrant as the ones we saw on Tuesday is that they weren’t processed in the same manner, according to NASA. Instead, they look more like sepia-toned photographs. These were created to highlight certain characteristics. One view from the telescope’s near-infrared camera shows clear bands around the gas giant planet, as well as the Great Red Spot, an enduring storm big enough to “swallow the Earth,” according to NASA. To the left of the spot is the shadow of Europa, one of Jupiter’s orbiting moons.

Other moons in these images include Thebe and Metis. All these details were captured with about one-minute exposures, the U.S. space agency said.

Scientists are relieved that the James Webb Space Telescope aced its vision exam. Astronomers also look forward to investigating the vapor plumes spewing out of Europa and Saturn’s moon, Enceladus; places that could harbour oceans.

The team also wanted to know how fast an object could move and still be observed by the telescope, which is critical for astronomers who want to study flying space rocks. To test Webb’s limits, engineers attempted to track an asteroid in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter; 6481 Tenzing. They weren’t disappointed. “We had a speed limit of 30 milliarcseconds per second, which is as fast as Mars can get,” said Jane Rigby, a project scientist at NASA. “We actually broke through that. We managed to get a speed limit of 67, so we can track faster targets than we promised.”



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Scientists Find Out Why Some Distant Planets Have Clouds of Sands in Their Atmosphere

While clouds are made of water on Earth, their composition is quite different on other distant planets. Scientists have noted that some of these planets have sand clouds of silicates but could not unravel the conditions under which they are formed. Now, a new study has revealed the common trait that is conducive to sand cloud development. Led by researchers at the Western University, the study used observations of brown dwarfs made by NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope. Brown dwarfs are celestial bodies having size larger than a planet but smaller than a star.

“Understanding the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and planets where silicate clouds can form can also help us understand what we would see in the atmosphere of a planet that’s closer in size and temperature to Earth,” said Stanimir Metchev, a professor of exoplanet studies at Western University in London, Ontario, and co-author of the study.

The formation of any type of cloud is the same where the key ingredient gets heated up to form vapours. Once the ingredient — which can be anything from water, salt, sulphur, or ammonia — is trapped and cooled down, clouds are created.

The same principle is involved in the formation of silica clouds but as rock requires a high temperature to vaporise, such clouds are only found on hot celestial bodies like brown dwarfs. Researchers have used incorporated the brown dwarfs in their study as many of them have atmospheres similar to that of gas-dominated planets like Jupiter.

The Spitzer telescope had already spotted traces of silica clouds in the atmosphere of some brown dwarfs. However, the evidence wasn’t concrete enough. In the new study, researchers made use of over 100 of the detections and grouped them in accordance with the temperature of the brown dwarf. This helped them unearth a definitive trait and the temperature range in which silica clouds are formed.

“We had to dig through the Spitzer data to find these brown dwarfs where there was some indication of silicate clouds, and we really didn’t know what we would find,” said lead author Genaro Suarez.

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Jupiter Might Have Eaten Baby Planets To Amass Metals: Scientists 

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and has a mass that is 2.5x more than all the other planets put together. Most would remember that Jupiter is mostly made out of helium and hydrogen. But unlike most other gas giants, there is a significant presence of metals in the planet’s composition. Scientists have finally managed to determine where this metal in Jupiter originated from – other terrestrial planets that Jupiter consumed before they managed to fully form.

Using the Gravity Science instrument onboard NASA’s Juno probe, scientists set out to determine the composition of Jupiter. Juno, named after the Roman Goddess of the same name who was married to the Roman God Jupiter, entered the orbit of Jupiter in 2016 and used radio waves to measure the gravitational field around the planet.

Scientists have used the instruments to determine that the metallic elements found in Jupiter, which has a total mass of 11 to 30 times the mass of the Earth, were buried deep inside the planet. The metals were nearer to the centre of Jupiter than in the outer layers.

“There are two mechanisms for a gas giant like Jupiter to acquire metals during its formation: through the accretion of small pebbles or larger planetesimals,” said lead author Yamila Miguel of the study titled “Jupiter’s inhomogeneous envelope inhomogeneous envelope,” published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“We know that once a baby planet is big enough, it starts pushing out pebbles. The richness of metals inside Jupiter that we see now is impossible to achieve before that. So we can exclude the scenario with only pebbles as solids during Jupiter’s formation. Planetesimals are too big to be blocked, so they must have played a role.”

Planetesimals are solid objects in space that form out of cosmic dust grains. Once they grow to about a kilometre in size, these planetesimals are able to use their gravitational field to grow bigger – into protoplanets.

“Our results imply that Jupiter continued to accrete heavy elements in large amounts while its hydrogen-helium envelope was growing, contrary to predictions based on the pebble-isolation mass in its simplest incarnation, favouring instead planetesimal-based or more complex hybrid models,” said Miguel.

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