Saturn as you’ve never seen it before, captured by Webb telescope

By Trevor Mogg Published July 3, 2023

Saturn captured by the James Webb Space Telescope — NASA, ESA, CSA, JWST Saturn team

NASA has shared a gorgeous image of Saturn captured recently by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

Webb’s first near-infrared observations of the second largest planet in our solar system also show several of Saturn’s moons: Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys.

Saturn and three of its moons, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope — Saturn and three of its moons, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope NASA, ESA, CSA, JWST Saturn team

In the image, Saturn itself appears darker than you might expect, but that’s because of the infrared wavelength being used to observe the celestial body, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere.

Recommended Videos

Saturn’s icy rings, on the other hand, lack methane and so really stand out, giving us an unusual view of the sixth planet from the sun.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Webb turned its attention to Saturn as part of an exercise to test the space telescope’s potential for detecting faint moons around the planet and its bright rings.

“Any newly discovered moons could help scientists put together a more complete picture of the current system of Saturn, as well as its past,” NASA said.

The early results are promising, with plenty of detail captured within Saturn’s ring system.

NASA said that even deeper exposures will enable researchers to better analyze some of Saturn’s fainter rings, which comprise rocky and icy fragments that range in size “from smaller than a grain of sand to a few as large as mountains on Earth.”

Over the past few decades, Saturn has been observed by other missions such as NASA’s Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, the Cassini spacecraft, and the Hubble Space Telescope. But using its near-infrared camera, the powerful Webb telescope, which started sending back stunning images of deep space last year, offers researchers an excellent chance to deepen their understanding of the planet and perhaps discover new features and characteristics over the coming years.

“We are very pleased to see JWST produce this beautiful image, which is confirmation that our deeper scientific data also turned out well,” Dr. Matthew Tiscareno, a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute who led the process of designing this observation, said in a statement. “We look forward to digging into the deep exposures to see what discoveries may await.”

Did you know you can even see Saturn with the naked eye? These excellent astronomy apps show you how.

Topics

Tech News

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

Space

James Webb spots another pair of galaxies forming a question mark

The galaxy cluster MACS-J0417.5-1154 is so massive it is warping the fabric of space-time and distorting the appearance of galaxies behind it, an effect known as gravitational lensing. This natural phenomenon magnifies distant galaxies and can also make them appear in an image multiple times, as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope saw here.

The internet had a lot of fun last year when eagle-eyed viewers spotted a galaxy that looked like a question mark in an image from the James Webb Space Telescope. Now, Webb has stumbled across another questioning galaxy, and the reasons for its unusual shape reveal an important fact about how the telescope looks at some of the most distant galaxies ever observed.

The new question mark-shaped galaxy is part of an image of galaxy cluster MACS-J0417.5-1154, which is so massive that it distorts space-time. Extremely massive objects -- in this case, a cluster of many galaxies -- exert so much gravitational force that they bend space, so the light traveling past these objects is stretched. It's similar using a magnifying glass. In some cases, this effect, called gravitational lensing, can even make the same galaxy appear multiple times in different places within one image.

Space

James Webb is explaining the puzzle of some of the earliest galaxies

This image shows a small portion of the field observed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) for the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) survey. It is filled with galaxies. The light from some of them has traveled for over 13 billion years to reach the telescope.

From practically the moment it was turned on, the James Webb Space Telescope has been shaking cosmology. In some of its very earliest observations, the telescope was able to look back at some of the earliest galaxies ever observed, and it found something odd: These galaxies were much brighter than anyone had predicted. Even when the telescope's instruments were carefully calibrated over the few weeks after beginning operations, the discrepancy remained. It seemed like the early universe was a much busier, brighter place than expected, and no one knew why.

This wasn't a minor issue. The fact early galaxies appeared to be bigger or brighter than model predicted meant that something was off about the way we understood the early universe. The findings were even considered "universe breaking." Now, though, new research suggests that the universe isn't broken -- it's just that there were early black holes playing tricks.

Space

James Webb Telescope captures gorgeous galaxy with a hungry monster at its heart

Featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope is Messier 106, also known as NGC 4258. This is a nearby spiral galaxy that resides roughly 23 million light-years away in the constellation Canes Venatici, practically a neighbour by cosmic standards. Messier 106 is one of the brightest and nearest spiral galaxies to our own and two supernovae have been observed in this galaxy in 1981 and 2014.

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows off a nearby galaxy called Messier 106 -- a spiral galaxy that is particularly bright. At just 23 million light-years away (that's relatively close by galactic standards), this galaxy is of particular interest to astronomers due to its bustling central region, called an active galactic nucleus.

The high level of activity in this central region is thought to be due to the monster that lurks at the galaxy's heart. Like most galaxies including our own, Messier 106 has an enormous black hole called a supermassive black hole at its center. However, the supermassive black hole in Messier 106 is particularly active, gobbling up material like dust and gas from the surrounding area. In fact, this black hole eats so much matter that as it spins, it warps the disk of gas around it, which creates streamers of gas flying out from this central region.