Pricefield | Lemmy
  • Communities
  • Create Post
  • Create Community
  • heart
    Support Lemmy
  • search
    Search
  • Login
  • Sign Up
kuontom to [email protected] • 2 years ago

The James Webb Space Telescope captures image of Saturn and its rings in all their shiny glory

media.kbin.social

message-square
7
fedilink
12

The James Webb Space Telescope captures image of Saturn and its rings in all their shiny glory

media.kbin.social

kuontom to [email protected] • 2 years ago
message-square
7
fedilink
  • kuontomOP
    link
    fedilink
    0•2 years ago

    See the official press release by SETI institute here -> seti.org/press-release/new-image-james-webb-space-telescope-reveals-astonishing-saturn-and-its-rings

    • tempestuousknave
      link
      fedilink
      1•2 years ago

      Direct image link for those who want unannotated full size image for wall paper

    • kuontomOP
      link
      fedilink
      2•2 years ago

      An excerpt:

      Methane gas absorbs almost all the sunlight falling on the atmosphere at this picture’s specific infrared wavelength (3.23 microns). As a result, Saturn’s familiar striped patterns aren’t visible because the methane-rich upper atmosphere blocks our view of the primary clouds. Instead, Saturn’s disk appears dark, and we see features associated with high-altitude stratospheric aerosols, including large, dark, and diffuse structures in Saturn’s northern hemisphere that don’t align with the planet’s lines of latitude. Unlike Saturn’s atmosphere, its rings lack methane, so at this infrared wavelength, they are no darker than usual and thus easily outshine the darkened planet.

[email protected]

[email protected]
Create a post
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]

Cover author: Michał Kałużny http://astrofotografia.pl/

  • 1 user / day
  • 1 user / week
  • 1 user / month
  • 1 user / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 289 Posts
  • 358 Comments
  • Modlog
  • mods:
  • UI: 0.18.4
  • BE: 0.18.2
  • Modlog
  • Instances
  • Docs
  • Code
  • join-lemmy.org