Saturn Captured By James Webb Space Telescope

Saturn Captured By James Webb Space Telescope

This image shows Saturn and some of its moons, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) NIRCam instrument on June 25, 2023. In this monochrome image, NIRCam filter F323N (3.23 microns) was color mapped with an orange hue. JWST turned to the ringed world Saturn in June 2023 to conduct a deep search for new ring structure and faint moons. Saturn itself appears to extremely dark at the infrared wavelengths sensed by JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy rings stay relatively bright, leading to the unusual appearance of Saturn in the JWST image. Several very deep Saturn exposures taken together with this image were designed to test JWST’s capacity to detect faint moons around the planet and its bright rings. Any newly discovered moons would be important dynamical tracers of the current Saturn system as well as its past history. This context image clearly shows details within the ring system, along with many of

Saturn Captured By James Webb Space Telescope

Saturn Captured By James Webb Space Telescope

This image shows Saturn and some of its moons, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) NIRCam instrument on June 25, 2023. In this monochrome image, NIRCam filter F323N (3.23 microns) was color mapped with an orange hue. JWST turned to the ringed world Saturn in June 2023 to conduct a deep search for new ring structure and faint moons. Saturn itself appears to extremely dark at the infrared wavelengths sensed by JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy rings stay relatively bright, leading to the unusual appearance of Saturn in the JWST image. Several very deep Saturn exposures taken together with this image were designed to test JWST’s capacity to detect faint moons around the planet and its bright rings. Any newly discovered moons would be important dynamical tracers of the current Saturn system as well as its past history. This context image clearly shows details within the ring system, along with many of