Uranus as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI/J. De Pasquale (STScI)
Uranus and its dust rings, along with clouds and polar caps, are captured in great detail by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
The rings around Uranus are difficult to see with most telescopes. This is because the black rocks and dust that form the ring reflect very little sunlight. Only two telescopes have directly imaged the rings, one aboard the Voyager 2 spacecraft during his 1986 flyby and the other at Keck Observatory on Earth in Hawaii.
But JWST’s infrared sensor, which captured Uranus at two separate wavelengths, is sensitive enough to detect them. Altogether, this image shows her 11 rings. Two other known rings are farther away and too faint to see.
JWST is now conducting a more detailed follow-up, and astronomers hope to see even more atmospheric features, as well as the planet’s last two rings.
An infrared photograph of Uranus shows its previously unseen surface and noisy atmosphere, such as the large, bright patch in the center of the planet’s north polar cap, visible when pointed toward Uranus’ summer sun. Also shown is a portion of and to the right of center in this image, a cloud toward the edge of the cap and another toward the left of the planet, as well as related to violent storms in its atmosphere. .
These storms and polar caps occur because Uranus rotates sideways at right angles to its orbit around the Sun, exposing it to prolonged periods of sunlight and darkness. Because it is so far from the Sun, it takes 84 years to orbit. So when Voyager 2 visited the planet in the 1980s, the image’s bright white north pole was in darkness.
Michael Merrifield, of the University of Nottingham, UK, said: “What a marvelous thing it is to be able to see Uranus in such detail that was previously only seen when Voyager 2 actually visited Uranus. Let’s go,” he said. “Unlike Voyager’s flyby, we can monitor its appearance over time to see how its strange overturning rotation affects weather patterns.”
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