James Webb Telescope Not Only Reveals New Galaxies, But Also Peek At Planet Jupiter

JAKARTA - After stunning the world with the first images from the powerful James Webb Space Telescope last week, NASA has now released more photos from the observatory. This time an image from inside our own Solar System.

The space agency revealed telescope images of the planet Jupiter, as well as the asteroid, which was used as a reference target when the engineering team calibrated the observatory's instruments.

The images serve as little teasers of the image we should get of our Solar System in the months and years to come.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), may be known for its ability to peer into some of the Universe's deepest recesses, but scientists will also be using the telescope to study our own cosmic environment in greater detail.

The images of Jupiter are therefore now used as a guide for JWST engineers, although they are not quite as bright as the high-resolution, color-processed photos NASA released this week of distant nebulae and galaxies. But the images show the kind of precision we can expect from JWST's images of the outer Solar System.

Jupiter's iconic storm feature, the Great Red Spot, can be clearly seen in the photo, as well as the icy moon on planet Europa. And Jupiter's thin rings, which are often overlooked in pictures of the gas giant, make a very faint appearance.

The images prove that JWST will be able to see relatively dim objects such as rings and moons surrounding the very bright planets in our outer Solar System, such as Jupiter and Saturn.

That ability will be useful in the ongoing hunt for possible signs of life near Earth. For example, scientists believe that Europa and Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, harbor liquid oceans beneath their crust. This may be a reservoir that may have the right materials for life.

According to NASA, JWST may be able to observe these moons and the water ice floes erupting from beneath their surface.

The asteroid photos released by NASA also show JWST's ability to track fast-moving objects. Scientists want to use observatories to track objects such as asteroids, comets, and more.

To test this capability, the commissioning team locked the asteroid in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, proving that they could monitor it with JWST.

In the end, they found the observatory could track objects moving at twice the speed of what they expected to track. "This is similar to photographing a crawling turtle when you are standing a mile away," NASA wrote in a blog post, also quoted by The Verge.