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Jupiter's Auroras, Moons, Rings & Hazes | James Webb Space Telescope
With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life.
These images come from the observatory’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum. Generally, the longest wavelengths appear redder and the shortest wavelengths are shown as more blue. Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate the Webb data into images.
These images were created from a composite of several images from Webb. Visible auroras extend to high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of Jupiter. The auroras shine in a filter that is mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. A different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. A third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a deeper main cloud. The Great Red Spot, a famous storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds, because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt
Jupiter's Auroras, Moons, Rings & Hazes: Wide View | James Webb Space Telescope
With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life.
In these wide-field views, Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea. The fuzzy spots in the lower background are likely galaxies “photobombing” this Jovian view.
This is a composite image from Webb’s NIRCam instrument (two filters) and was acquired on July 27, 2022.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt
With giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions, Jupiter has a lot going on. Now, the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope has captured new images of the planet. Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more clues to Jupiter’s inner life.
This image comes from the observatory’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Since infrared light is invisible to the human eye, the light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum. Generally, the longest wavelengths appear redder and the shortest wavelengths are shown as more blue. Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate the Webb data into images.
This image was created from a composite of several images from Webb. Visible auroras extend to high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of Jupiter. The auroras shine in a filter that is mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. A different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. A third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a deeper main cloud. The Great Red Spot, a famous storm so big it could swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds, because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight.
Credit: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt
Delivery of NASA's Most Powerful Moon Rocket: Artemis I
NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft will soon launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its flight test, Artemis I. However, the rocket did not arrive at the Cape fully assembled. Major parts of the rocket were built in locations across America. More than 1,000 companies in 45 states supplied parts and components for America’s Moon rocket. Custom barges, cargo planes, and trains then delivered the large parts of the Moon rocket to Kennedy. Watch to learn more about how NASA delivered the individual pieces of SLS to assemble them at KSC and form the SLS rocket that will send Orion to the Moon on the historic Artemis I mission.
Although it looks more like an entity seen through a microscope than a telescope, this rounded object, named NGC 2022, is certainly no alga or tiny, blobby jellyfish. Instead, it is a vast orb of gas in space, cast off by an ageing star. The star is visible in the orb's center, shining through the gases it formerly held onto for most of its stellar life.
When stars like the Sun grow advanced in age, they expand and glow red. These so-called red giants then begin to lose their outer layers of material into space. More than half of such a star's mass can be shed in this manner, forming a shell of surrounding gas. At the same time, the star's core shrinks and grows hotter, emitting ultraviolet light that causes the expelled gases to glow.
This type of object is called, somewhat confusingly, a planetary nebula, though it has nothing to do with planets. The name derives from the rounded, planet-like appearance of these objects in early telescopes.
NGC 2022 is located in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). It was first observed by William Herschel on December 28, 1785, who described it as: considerably bright, nearly round, like a star with a large diameter, like an ill-defined planetary nebula.
Credit: European Space Agency/Hubble & NASA, R. Wade
Wide-field View of Star-forming Region Around Newborn Star in Vela | ESO
This wide-field view shows a rich region of dust clouds and star formation in the southern constellation of Vela. Close to the center of the picture the jets of the Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 can be seen emerging from a dark cloud in which infant stars are being born.
Distance:1,400 light years
This view was created from images forming part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2.
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Digitized Sky Survey 2
This zoom sequence starts with a wide view of the southern Milky Way and then closes in on a rich region of dark clouds and young stars in the constellation of Vela (The Sails). One of these dark star-forming clouds features the Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 where jets from a young star are colliding with the surrounding material. This object was the target of a study using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) during the Early Science phase.
Distance:1,400 light years
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/Digitized Sky Survey 2/Nick Risinger
A Newborn Star: Radio and Visible Light Observations | ESO
This unprecedented image of Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 combines radio observations acquired with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) with much shorter wavelength visible light observations from ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT). The ALMA observations (orange and green, lower right) of the newborn star reveal a large energetic jet moving away from us, which in the visible is hidden by dust and gas. To the left (in pink and purple) the visible part of the jet is seen, streaming partly towards us.
Distance:1,400 light years
Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce.
A Marvel of Galactic Morphology: NGC 1156 | Hubble
This galaxy has a shape unlike many of the galaxies familiar to Hubble. Its thousands of bright stars evoke a spiral galaxy, but it lacks the characteristic ‘winding’ structure. The shining red blossoms stand out as well, twisted by clouds of dust—these are the locations of intense star formation. Yet it also radiates a diffuse glow, much like an elliptical galaxy and its core of older, redder stars. This galactic marvel is known to astronomers as NGC 1156.
NGC 1156 is located around 25 million light-years from Earth, in the constellation Aries. It has a variety of different features that are of interest to astronomers. A dwarf irregular galaxy, it is also classified as isolated, meaning no other galaxies are nearby enough to influence its odd shape and continuing star formation. The extreme energy of freshly formed young stars gives color to the galaxy, against the red glow of ionized hydrogen gas, while its center is densely-packed with older generations of stars.
Hubble has captured NGC 1156 before—this new image features data from a galactic gap-filling program simply titled “Every Known Nearby Galaxy”. Astronomers noticed that only three quarters of the galaxies within just over 30 million light-years of Earth had been observed by Hubble in sufficient detail to study the makeup of the stars within them. They proposed that in between larger projects, Hubble could take snapshots of the remaining quarter—including NGC 1156. Gap-filling programs like this one ensure that the best use is made of Hubble’s valuable observing time.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, R. B. Tully, R. Jansen, R. Windhorst
The Hubble Space Telescope has caught the eerie, wispy tendrils of a dark interstellar cloud being destroyed by the passage of one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster. Like a flashlight beam shining off the wall of a cave, the star is reflecting light off the surface of pitch black clouds of cold gas laced with dust. These are called reflection nebulae.
This image shows a dark interstellar cloud ravaged by the passage of Merope, one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster. Just as a torch beam bounces off the wall of a cave, the star is reflecting light from the surface of pitch-black clouds of cold gas laced with dust. As the nebula approaches Merope, the strong starlight shining on the dust decelerates the dust particles. The nebula is drifting through the cluster at a relative speed of roughly 11 kilometers per second.
Distance:450 light years
Credit: NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), George Herbig and Theodore Simon (University of Hawaii).
Artist’s Impression of a Herbig-Haro Object | European Space Agency
This artist's concept of a Herbig-Haro object shows a jet coming from a young star. Images taken over two decades with the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope have captured the motion of these jets, showing the matter moving over time. This artist's impression shows how the stellar outflows might look over a period of many centuries.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble (M. Kornmesser)
Herbig-Haro objects are some of the rarer sights in the night sky, taking the form of thin spindly jets of matter floating amongst the surrounding gas and stars. The two Herbig-Haro objects cataloged as HH46 and HH47, seen in this image taken with the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope, were spotted in the constellation of Vela (The Sails), at a distance of over 1,400 light-years from Earth. Prior to its discovery in 1977 by the American astronomer R. D. Schwartz, the exact mechanism by which these multi-colored objects formed was unknown.
Before 1997 it was theorized by Schwartz and others that the objects could be a type of reflection nebula, or a type of shock wave formed from the gas emitted from a star interacting with the surrounding matter. The mystery was finally solved when a protostar, unseen in this image, was discovered at the center of the long jets of matter. The outflows of matter, some 10 light-years across, were ejected from the newly born star and violently propelled outwards at speeds of over 150 kilometers per second. Upon reaching the surrounding gas, the collision created the bright shock waves seen here.
Distance:1,400 light years
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini
Zooming on Gas Jets from a Young Star in Orion | Hubble
This video begins with a ground-based view of the night sky, before zooming on the knotted clumps of gas that make up the Herbig–Haro object 24, as the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope sees it.
Distance:1,500 light years
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble, NASA, Digitized Sky Survey, N. Risinger
An energetic outburst from an infant star streaks across this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. This stellar tantrum—produced by an extremely young star in the earliest phase of formation —consists of an incandescent jet of gas travelling at supersonic speeds. As the jet collides with material surrounding the still-forming star, the shock heats this material and causes it to glow. The result is the colorfully wispy structures, which astronomers refer to as Herbig–Haro objects, billowing across the lower left of this image.
Herbig–Haro objects are seen to evolve and change significantly over just a few years. This particular object, called HH34, was previously captured by Hubble between 1994 and 2007, and again in glorious detail in 2015. HH34 resides approximately 1,250 light-years from Earth in the Orion Nebula, a large region of star formation visible to the unaided eye. The Orion Nebula is one of the closest sites of widespread star formation to Earth, and as such has been pored over by astronomers in search of insights into how stars and planetary systems are born.
The data in this image are from a set of Hubble observations of four nearby bright jets with the Wide Field Camera 3 taken to help pave the way for future science with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Webb—which will observe at predominantly infrared wavelengths—will be able to peer into the dusty envelopes surrounding still-forming protostars, revolutionizing the study of jets from these young stars. Hubble’s high-resolution images of HH34 and other jets will help astronomers interpret future observations with Webb.
Credit: European Space Agency (ESA)/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini
The artistic outburst of an extremely young star, in the earliest phase of formation, is captured in this spectacular image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope. The colorful wisps, found in the lower left of the image, are painted onto the sky by a young star cocooned in the partially illuminated cloud of obscuring dust seen to the upper right.
Pictured punching through the enshrouding dust is an extremely hot, blue jet of gas released by the young star. As this jet speeds through space, it collides with cooler surrounding material. The result is the colorful object to the lower left, produced as the cooler material is heated by the jet.
This wispy object is known as HH34 and it is an example of a Herbig–Haro (HH) object. It resides approximately 1,400 light-years away near the Orion Nebula, a large star formation region within the Milky Way. HH objects exist for a cosmically brief time—typically thousands of years—with changes seen in observations taken only a few years apart.
Although the jet extends the entire length between the infant star and HH34, only a fraction of it appears visible. This part of the jet possesses an intricate structure of knots and ripples, thought to be caused by the different outbursts catching up and ramming into each other over time.
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