New Webb image captures clearest view of Neptune’s rings in decades

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/new-webb-image-captures-clearest-view-of-neptune-s-rings-in-decades/

by pseudolus • 4 years ago

496 125 4 years ago

guhidalg• 4 years ago

For a second I thought this was Saturn and said “don’t we have better images of this?” Then I actually read it’s Neptune and realized all our good images of it come from probes. It’s crazy JWST can just see the rings and the moons, incredible observatory.

anigbrowl3• 4 years ago

My understanding is that this isn't even the 'good' camera, just the comparatively low-resolution infrared one.

adastra22• 4 years ago

JWST is meant to see in infrared. That’s it’s good (only?) camera.

hrnnnnnn• 4 years ago

Webb has two main cameras, NIRCAM for near-infrared, MIRI for mid-infrared. MIRI is lower resolution because it's looking at longer wavelengths.

This image is from NIRCAM, so it's the highest res Webb can do. Neptune is small in the image because it's very far away. The images you see of detailed nebulae are so high res because, even though they're further away, those nebulae are enormous.

KerryJones• 4 years ago

Love everything coming out of James Webb telescope

cwillu• 4 years ago

“Webb also captured seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons. Dominating this Webb portrait of Neptune is a very bright point of light sporting the signature diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb’s images, but this is not a star. Rather, this is Neptune’s large and unusual moon, Triton.

Covered in a frozen sheen of condensed nitrogen, Triton reflects an average of 70 percent of the sunlight that hits it. It far outshines Neptune in this image because the planet’s atmosphere is darkened by methane absorption at these near-infrared wavelengths. Triton orbits Neptune in an unusual backward (retrograde) orbit, leading astronomers to speculate that this moon was originally a Kuiper belt object that was gravitationally captured by Neptune. Additional Webb studies of both Triton and Neptune are planned in the coming year”

kloch2• 4 years ago

Have they released any images of the galactic center yet?

toastedwedge• 4 years ago

I imagine that, along with any data for TRAPPIST, is on the [very long] list of things to do. Otherwise I'm sure it'd be posted here in no time

nuccy2• 4 years ago

The galactic center image won't be as fancy, unfortunately. Resolution of Webb is far-far-far too low to see anything related to the black hole, the best we could do is enhance the view of the stars near Sgr A* [1].

1. https://www.eso.org/public/videos/eso0226a/

nuccy2• 4 years ago

Webb resolution is about 0.1 arc-seconds (wavelength dependent) [1]. Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) resolution is about 25 micro arc-seconds (wavelength dependent) [2].

So roughly speaking, since you cannot really compare the two, since they observe on quite different wavelengths, EHT has ~4000 times better resolution than Webb. Note that we don't speak about sensitivity here. ALMA array of radio telescopes has a collecting area of 7000 m2, while it is just one of many "nodes" of the EHT. Webb total collecting area is about 25 m2.

1. https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/about/faqs/faq.html#sharp

2. https://eventhorizontelescope.org/technology

kloch2• 4 years ago

Understood, but it still would be very interesting to see the area with JWST's full range of instruments.

cl422• 4 years ago

Wow! If anyone is curious as to why Triton is so bright...

Covered in a frozen sheen of condensed nitrogen, Triton reflects an average of 70 percent of the sunlight that hits it. It far outshines Neptune in this image because the planet’s atmosphere is darkened by methane absorption at these near-infrared wavelengths.

That's pretty neat!

ajross• 4 years ago

Also explains why the rings are brighter than the planet here, when they were all but invisible to Voyager 2.

pastor_bob• 4 years ago

woah

I originally thought it was a star

MiguelVieira• 4 years ago

70 percent of the sunlight that hits it

It looks like that's comparable to fresh snow or a glacier?

Cerium• 4 years ago

Better than a glacier but worse than fresh snow. "More than 80 to 90 percent of the sunlight falling on fresh snow is reflected back into space, compared to 15 to 35 percent of the sunlight reflected by most ice."[1].

[1]https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/DirtySnow/page2.p...

bcbrown• 4 years ago

The fact that methane absorbs infrared/near-infrared frequencies is also the mechanism that causes it to be a greenhouse gas.

jacobolus• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune#Internal_structure

"At a depth of 7,000 km, the conditions may be such that methane decomposes into diamond crystals that rain downwards like hailstones.... the top of the mantle may be an ocean of liquid carbon with floating solid 'diamonds'."

Victerius• 4 years ago

I hope to see pictures in real color later, if not with my own eyes. I'd be down for a 2 year round trip to Neptune.

trentnix• 4 years ago

2 year trip? At that speed, you’d zip by faster than the Griswold family vacationed at the Grand Canyon.

We should have something orbiting Neptune or at least on its way. I’ll be a very old man before anything could get there if we want to put something orbit (if I’m not already gone by then).

spaetzleesser• 4 years ago

2years is a little optimistic.

I wonder how dark it would be out there if you saw it with your own eyes. I would guess it’s pretty dark.

fshbbdssbbgdd2• 4 years ago

The eyes have impressive dynamic range.

Moonlight is 250000x dimmer than sunlight, but you can still see things illuminated by moonlight once your eyes adjust.

Neptune is 29 AU from the Sun, so by inverse square law, the sunlight is 29^2=840x dimmer on Neptune than Earth. Visibility should be decent out there. Neptune will stand out pretty well against the perfect blackness of space.

stoicjumbotron2• 4 years ago

Have they released any high resolution version? I tried finding on their website, but did not find anything.

dwringer3• 4 years ago

I tried comparing this image with some from the Hubble and this one appears to be slightly sharper (not to mention much more detailed in terms of the atmosphere thanks to the infrared wavelengths). I don't think it gets too much higher-res than this without a probe getting close to the planet.

A google search indicates Neptune's largest apparent size in the sky is 2.4 arcseconds[0], and a commentor below suggests JWST's resolution is approximately 0.1 arcseconds (.068 at a wavelength of two microns[1], from some google searching), which would suggest a rough maximum resolution of about 35 pixels, while this image is 80. I'm unclear on the exact reasons for this difference.

[0] https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/neptunefact....

[1] https://www.stsci.edu/files/live/sites/www/files/home/jwst/a...

nowahe• 4 years ago

Looks like the image in the article is a crop of this[1] view, which can be accessed in high res.

You can find all the JWT images in full res on here[2].

[1] https://stsci-opo.org/STScI-01GCVNZ68YTC7FPTBSNA3QDGYW.png

[2] https://webbtelescope.org/resource-gallery/images

mbauman• 4 years ago

Holy cow the whole field is so amazing. Galaxies everywhere!

dwringer3• 4 years ago

Thanks for the links! I checked out the source image and it still appears to be 80 pixels high in the "full resolution for display" image, same as the article's crop. There is a "close up" view which shows Neptune as 300px high, but I can't resolve any detail that isn't in the 80 pixel version. I think this is as detailed as it gets based on the apparent size of Neptune and JWST's angular resolution.

stoicjumbotron2• 4 years ago

Thanks a lot for the links!

layer82• 4 years ago

This seems to be the highest-res closeup: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/images/2022/046/01G...

dwringer3• 4 years ago

I think that's been upscaled, as it shows Neptune being over 300px in diameter. Unless I'm misinterpreting something (a distinct possibility), that would require an angular resolution of nearly 10x what the JWST is capable of. I don't know what kind of processing they applied to get it to that size but I can't resolve any detail in that closeup that isn't visible in the version where it's 80px. By my naive calculations (which I explain in another comment), Neptune should be about 30 pixels wide - is there anyone who can shed light on this mystery?

cletus2• 4 years ago

I really hope to see a Cassini or Juno like probe to visit Neptune and Uranus in my lifetime.

As good as JWST is and these images are, these objects are so distant the only high-res imagery you can get is by visiting them. Prior to New Horizons, our best image of Pluto, for example, was a few blurry pixels and that remained the case even until New Horizons was 99% of the way there.

nkoren• 4 years ago

You may be in luck with Uranus: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranus_Orbiter_and_Probe

dotancohen• 4 years ago

As I get older, that's always good to hear, doc.

dylan6045• 4 years ago

I would say I'd like this for all the planets. What Cassini and Juno brought us is simply stunning. Some of the details visible in Jupiter's clouds or Saturn's rings have just been amazing.

The images Voyagers and New Horizons brought are nice and not to be discounted, but fly-bys vs orbit insertion missions just not the same. We should have oribters parked around each of our local major bodies. We should then have rovers on all of the solid bodies (that won't melt the thing in mere hours) after that. The MRO is such a great example.

WalterBright5• 4 years ago

If I had Bill Gates' money, I'd be funding that.

april_22• 4 years ago

Even the Rosetta/Philae images of the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko are out of this world!

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Rosett...

m3kw9• 4 years ago

I’m wonder if they can miniaturize a camera and propulsion system enough that can travel fast enough to just take pics and bring them back instead of needing large antennas/power modules to transmit back in say a year or so?

nappy-doo• 4 years ago

No. It's very hard to go fast, and to get to Neptune, you need to burn a lot of fuel to get there. Getting home needs a whole lot more fuel too. Space travel is hard. You can go with lower energy transfer orbits, and wait forever to get there, or you can go high-speed and carry a ton of fuel with you.

jackmott42• 4 years ago

The mass to get the ship back and land safely is probably more than the antenna

reggedtorespond• 4 years ago

It's like 12 years to get there and another 12 years to get back. Sending information back at the speed of light is preferable.

Sharlin4• 4 years ago

You don't need a very high-powered radio if a) you have plenty of time to transmit the data back and b) you can afford to build large receiving telescopes back on Earth. The latter we already do have, although bigger the better, and the former is just a case of patience. Galileo, famously, was unable to fully unfold its high-gain antenna and had to transmit everything via the much lower-bandwidth low-gain antenna. The ability to batch the probe software to use higher-efficiency data encoding and modulation meant this was not as disastrous as it could have been. This failure mode was also likely the reason that both Cassini and New Horizons opted for a more traditional rigid dish antenna.

mabbo• 4 years ago

I think part of the problem with that is just how far away Neptune is.

Getting a probe like New Horizons to do a flyby requires a massive rocket. But to also have it be capable of slowing down to enter orbit and stick around means either it was moving slower on it's path to get there (so it takes a lot longer) or it has to carry a huge amount of fuel to burn to slow down (so it takes an even bigger rocket).

Neither option is great.

cletus2• 4 years ago

So for any of these destinations there are really two options: fly-by or orbit insertion.

Pluto obviously was a fly-by. There were several reasons for this. Distance is a big one. Also, the more distant planets are the lower their orbital velocity. More distance = longer travel time. A higher velocity can reduce the travel time but you need to speed up at launch and slow down on arrival and that requires a higher delta-V budget. That requires extra mass of fuel, which becomes a vicious circle.

Pluto is tiny and far so a fly-by was really the only option. Even then it took 10 years to get there.

Neptune is more massive, closer and heavier. All of these help but if I'm reading [1] correctly, you'd still be realistically looking at a 30 year travel time for an insertion orbit. Having instruments hibernate for that long and work on the other end is really the biggest problem.

We're entering an era of super-heavy lifters. Maybe these will meaningfully increase the practical delta-V budgets.

Inserting a probe into orbit around Uranus (let alone Neptune) seems currently impractical just given how long it would take but that doesn't make me want it any less. Even a fly-by is better than nothing.

But the delta-V for Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all roughly the same

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget

tzfld• 4 years ago

Actually, Juno is very limited in it's capabilities when it comes to flagship missions like Cassini. Talking about Jupiter, Galileo was in the same capability range as the Cassini.

iza• 4 years ago

Also posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32926283

dang• 4 years ago

Thanks! I think we'll merge that thread hither since this one has the original source.

("Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

causi2• 4 years ago

JWST's infrared capability is good at showing previously invisible details but I find it very odd its images keep looking like they're lower resolution and less detailed in the visual spectrum than Hubble images. I realize the observation times are shorter but jeez the JWST photo of Jupiter was garbage compared to a telescope that launched 32 years ago.

donatj• 4 years ago

This has been my general feeling, that the JWST photos are less visually interesting/detailed than even Hubble photos. I'm sure they have a ton of invisible data that scientists find invaluable, but they have thus far been largely visually unimpressive.

adgjlsfhk12• 4 years ago

IMO, the JWST deep field is really impressive. There are something like 4x more galaxies in the background that just were invisible in Hubble due to redshift. JWST is heavily optimized for spectra, far away objects, and looking through gas clouds. For other stuff, you're probably better off using giant ground based telescopes.

sbierwagen2• 4 years ago

The more spectacular Hubble photos are mosaics assembled from weeks or months of observation time. JWST is brand new and has been spending most of its time doing science observations rather than images for the press office. Give it a few years.

mixmastamyk• 4 years ago

It’s a near infrared telescope, on purpose. Not optimized for non-receding objects.

edgyquant2• 4 years ago

What photos are these? It has already produced images multiple times more detailed than their Hubble equivalents.

b203• 4 years ago

Roughly the angular reolution of a telescope is 1.22*wavelength/diameter. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_resolution. Hubble uses visual light (0.5 um wavelength) while JWST uses IR (5 um wavelength) and beyond. So the wavelength for JWST is 10x larger than Hibble, but the diameter is only ~2.7X (Hubble 2.4m vs JWST 6.5m dia). So JWST resolution is 1.8x worse than Hubble.

causi2• 4 years ago

That explains a lot, thank you.

adolph• 4 years ago

3 cheers for NASA!

I'm amazed by the below UI to show how Neptune's orbit at 30AU is proportionately farther from Jupiter (5.2 AU) than Jupyter is to Earth.

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/overview/

anigbrowl3• 4 years ago

Now that we have this wonderful tool, I really hope astronomers will dedicate 1 week of each year or one day of each month (depending on what orbits allow/make worthwhile) imaging bodies in our own solar system. I think it's a crime that this is the first new image of Neptune in 30 years.

Every advance in astronomical equipment or technique gives the lie to 'we already know about X, it's not that interesting' arguments. Longitudinal observation of our nearest neighbors are likely to significantly increase our knowledge, and these are the only bodies that are accessible to us barring some massive revolution in physics.

layer82• 4 years ago

the first new image of Neptune in 30 years.

In Neptune years, it’s less than a fifth of a year. ;)

cl422• 4 years ago

This isn't the first new image of Neptune in the last 30 years. Astronomers have imaged Neptune since Voyager, and the Hubble Space Telescope was used for this as well. See here: https://hubblesite.org/contents/media/images/2021/047/01FM0Q...

anigbrowl3• 4 years ago

Thanks, I misread something on the NASA page. But still, I'd like more emphasis on studying reachable heavenly bodies even if it slightly delays our speculation into more distant ones.

bearmode• 4 years ago

It's the first image of Neptune's rings since Voyager 2, I've seen this mistake made a few times now

floxy• 4 years ago

Here are images of Neptune taken by Hubble last year:

https://esahubble.org/images/heic2113e/

from 2020:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2020/dark-storm-on-nept...

from 2018:

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/hubble-reveals-dyn...

2016:

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/hubble-sees-new-dark-spot...

2013:

https://esahubble.org/images/opo1330c/

2011:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/multimedia/hubble-...

If you are more interested in images from ground based telescopes, here is Neptune from 2018 taken with the ESA Very Large Telescope:

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/936/neptune-from-the-...

smegsicle• 4 years ago

those pictures suck though

WalterBright5• 4 years ago

There was a recent HN thread where I pontificated that a twin JW telescope could have been built and launched at 10% of the cost of #1. One of the (vehement) arguments against this was there weren't enough things to look at.

I just have to shake my head in amazement.

Sharlin4• 4 years ago

I wonder why you were downvoted. It's absolutely certain that all the big telescopes get way more proposals than there is available observation time. And not all the proposals that get rejected are of low quality.

Sharlin4• 4 years ago

Solar system observations are a explicitly included in the JWST's list of use cases, and observation time is allocated via the normal proposal process. I'm sure we'll see more pictures of solar system objects, even though obviously observations will always be science first, public relations second.

ck2• 4 years ago

I love there are technical documents for each of the cameras:

https://www.stsci.edu/jwst/instrumentation/instruments

https://jwst-docs.stsci.edu/jwst-near-infrared-camera

(still trying to find the megapixels)

aha

     Pixels 8 × 2040 × 2040 pixels

      Pixel scale  0.031"/pixel

svnpenn• 4 years ago

Whenever I think of Neptune, I think of this image:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neptune_Full.jpg

This was taken in 1989 by Voyager 2, now 33 years ago. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have visited either of the ice giant planets.

aero-glide2• 4 years ago

Its a pity we don't already have an orbiter around every planet!

NHQ2• 4 years ago

Those don't look like rings to me!

WalterBright5• 4 years ago

That's no moon!

NHQ2• 4 years ago

What is moon pointing to??

sylware2• 4 years ago

can we get a noscript/basic (x)html link?

jakzurr• 4 years ago

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/for_nasa.gov_imagea...

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/for_stsci_site_imag...

But really, it's a NASA site, it's probably safe w/o noscript (ie, disable restrictions for tab). Or, you can just individually enable permanently: nasa.gov; digitalgov.gov; foresee.com; gstatic.com; youtube.com (is what makes it work for me).

sylware2• 4 years ago

My browsers don't even have a javascript engine in the first place. It is not about security, but it's about those grotesquely and absurdely massive web engines, google financed blink/geeko and apple financed webkit (including the SDK).

Thx for the links though.

superkuh• 4 years ago

Anyone have a mirror on an actual website instead of the javascript application that all NASA.gov sites have become? Even with javascript enabled I can't get it to display anything other than a black screen.

And when I view source on that black screen it's all external JS calls. There are no img or href tags of HTML I can find that contain the images.

dav_Oz3• 4 years ago

A little historical tangent:

Tomorrow (23rd) marks the 176th anniversary of the discovery of Neptune (~ 1.07 years on Neptune; 164.8 Earth years).

Johann Gottfried Galle an astronomer at the Berlin observatory found Neptune at the behest of Urbain Le Verrier who calculated its position by hypothesizing that some body must perturb Uranus orbit to explain the distinct deviation from the predicted motion by Newton's law of universal gravitation.

Le Verrier couldn't find a single French astronomer willing to take a look out at the sky after presenting his extensive calculations to the French Academy on 31 August. On 18 September he then wrote a letter to the German astronomer Galle at the Berlin observatory.

After receiving the letter 5 days later Galle immediately set up his telescope the same night and found a +8 mag star (within 1 degree of the Le Verrier's calculation) not listed on the official Prussian star chart. The next night he managed to measure the star itself moving by 4 arcseconds, finally confirming Le Verrier prediction of a new planet (and to this day last).

At ~30 AU (30x the distance sun-earth; Uranus being at ~20 AU) the discovery instantaneously made the solar system 1.5x bigger ;)

c54• 4 years ago

God what an incredible story, I love hearing it every time. The prediction of a planet using science and maths.

The follow up (correct me on the details here) is that they later measured Mercury’s orbit to a high precision, estimated that some body was disturbing Mercury’s orbit, and went looking again to repeat Sir Isaac’s miraculous math. But… nothing was there. It turned out Mercury orbits at relativistic speeds and Newton’s model wasn’t taking that into account.

Vaguely remember this from Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions

interpenetrate• 4 years ago

Wow, that's cool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_(hypothetical_planet)

idontwantthis• 4 years ago

It isn't from Mercury's speed (Special relativity) it's from proximity to the Sun (General Relativity).

dav_Oz3• 4 years ago

Indeed! It is a quite telling story about the messy inner workings of scientific discoveries.

In the case of Neptune, Le Verrier hit the nail right on its head (where others suggested a limit to Newton's theory of gravity). This tremendous feat gave him all the reason to search for other perturbations around the sky to find unknown objects.

So, by 1859 he was the first to find Mercury not completely adhering to Newtonian mechanics (anomalous rate of precession of the perihelion[0]), therefore he postulated smaller unseen objects in its vicinity, even naming a possible planet Vulcan.

But there, he was wrong and Newton's law really hit a limit here at such proximity to the sun.

Ironically not at "long distances" as suggested in the anomaly of Uranus' orbit. Also, Einstein within his GR framework correctly predicted the value of deflection of "starlight passing very close to the sun" in 1915 which was validated by the measurements of Eddington taking advantage of a total eclipse in 1919 --- a natural occurring coronagraph (a big moon) of the Sun from Earth's view ;)

P.S.: I forgot to mention D'Arrest[1] role in finding Neptune in the sky:

While still a student at the University of Berlin, d'Arrest was party to Johann Gottfried Galle's search for Neptune. On 23 September 1846, he suggested that a recently drawn chart of the sky, in the region of Urbain Le Verrier's predicted location, could be compared with the current sky to seek the displacement characteristic of a planet, as opposed to a stationary star.

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#...

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Louis_d%27Arrest#Bi...

trappist• 4 years ago

Known for: Not discovering Neptune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Challis

manholio• 4 years ago

After receiving the letter 5 days later

Meanwhile, my same country mail takes up to 2 weeks to arrive. No wonder I'm not making any ground breaking advances.

geoduck14• 4 years ago

You should rediscover Pluto

enviclash2• 4 years ago

You mean perhaps 1.5^2?

dav_Oz3• 4 years ago

Yeah, ~ 1.5x in relation to their respective aphelions (farthest orbital distance to the Sun)

But, yes - if you will - the area of the solar system consequently has more than doubled; which has nicer ring to it :)

To be exact if my numbers are correct:

πab = πa² √(1-e²)

Uranus (a = 19.19126 AU; e = 0.04717)

⇒ ~ 1155.755 AU²

Neptune (a = 30.07 AU; e = 0.008678 (what a neat circle!))

⇒ ~ 2840.54 AU²

i.e. approx. 2.46x the former area

forgotmypw17• 4 years ago

Accessible link: https://archive.ph/1WCuG

hulitu• 4 years ago

It looks rather blurry and looks like it's captured with an Android camera (highly compressed jpg) although the file is png.

kuschkufan• 4 years ago

It's comments like this one that make me wonder whether it's made by a bot account which purpose it is to discredit Android and shape a negative reception, intended to work like anti advertisement. It's not just Android of course, it could happen for any topic.

More likely though that this user just does what any fanboy does - spew FUD on the "other side".

If you now further discuss Android camera quality, you'd just be off-topic.

llampx• 4 years ago

I had just skimmed over the comment before reading yours and realizing that you are right.

New Webb image captures clearest view of Neptune’s rings in decades

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