Located 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth, Neptune orbits in one of the dimmest areas of our Solar System. Neptune has fascinated and perplexed researchers since its discovery in 1846. Webb’s extremely stable and precise image quality also permits these very faint rings to be detected so close to Neptune. In addition to several bright narrow rings, the Webb images clearly show Neptune’s fainter dust bands. Most striking about Webb’s new image is the crisp view of the planet’s dynamic rings - some of which haven’t been seen at all, let alone with this clarity, since the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989. Not only has Webb captured the clearest view of this peculiar planet’s rings in more than 30 years, but its cameras are also revealing the ice giant in a whole new light.

Be sure to check out IGN’s science page to keep up to date with all of the biggest and weirdest developments in space exploration.The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is showing off its capabilities closer to home with its first image of Neptune. The JWST is set to turn its gaze on Neptune again later this year. That said, bright bands of high-altitude clouds and a prominent storm can be seen winding their way across the face of the alien world.Ī subtle brighter band of infrared light can also be seen near the equator, marking out the region where atmospheric ice clouds fall towards the surface and warm up. However, these same infrared absorbing qualities render the majority of Neptune’s surface relatively dark in the new JWST portrait. This is why the planet appears blue in visible light images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The methane present in its upper atmosphere is very adept at absorbing the red, and infrared light from our Sun, and at reflecting other wavelengths. Neptune’s apparent dullness in the new image is also down to its atmospheric composition. Because of this, it is able to outshine mighty Neptune, despite being smaller than Earth’s moon.

In the present day, Triton is coated in a frozen layer of nitrogen, which allows it to reflect around 70 percent of the sunlight that strikes its surface.

An annotated, infrared view of Neptune captured by the JWST (Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI) However, at some point in the ancient past, the wanderer passed too close to Neptune, and was captured by it’s powerful gravitational pull. Scientists believe that Tritan was once a roaming planetoid that travelled the kuiper belt, a distant icy debris field that surrounds our star. Neptune’s largest natural satellite travels around its host planet in the opposite direction to the ice giant’s other satellites in what is known as a retrograde orbit. Seven of Neptune’s moons can also be seen dotting the image, including the brilliantly luminous form of Tritan, which dominates the upper portion of the vista. In the infrared part of the light spectrum, Neptune’s rings reveal themselves as a collection of well defined halos circling the ghostly planet, punctuated by a population of diffuse dust bands. The new image was captured using Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).

Now, a new image captured by the powerful James Webb Space Telescope has given us the best view of Neptune’s rings since Voyager 2 visited the distant world 30 years ago.

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