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The Rings of Neptune
Stunning images of a lesser-known ringed planet
Did you know that Neptune has rings? Well now you do. The James Webb Space Telescope has captured stunning images of the planet that clearly illuminate its rings, which previously were too thin and faint to capture clearly.
The furthest planet from the sun has narrow bands stardust. Astronomers already knew this, but it's certainly a surprise for the casual space enthusiast.
The James Webb telescope obtained these images using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to capture reflected light at infrared wavelengths. This gives Neptune a ghostly, colorless look that differs from the ice-blue image many of us have. This image is a partial fulfillment of the Webb mission of providing a completely new perspective of our cosmos out to the edge of our visible universe.
“It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” Heidi Hammel, Webb interdisciplinary scientist for solar system observations and vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, said in a statement.
How long have we known about Neptune’s rings? A look at astronomical history will help. Since 1977, we’ve known that Uranus has rings from ground-based observations. We then learned the same about Jupiter through the Voyager 2 mission in 1979.
It was theorized that Neptune likely possessed rings, but that they were thin wisps in comparison to the more conventionally observed rings of the other gas giants. This was confirmed by the same Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989, when it finally reached Neptune. That 33-year-old image below, produced by Voyager, was our best detailed view of Neptune’s ring system until now.
No spacecraft has visited the Neptune since Voyager 2, and not even the Hubble Space Telescope managed to produce a better image. However, the Webb telescope is far more powerful than Hubble and has captured both the sharp outlines of the planet’s rings but and the granular space dust within the rings.
