The Webb Space Telescope recently set its sights on the mysterious planet Uranus and discovered it to be a vibrant world. This time, the two-color version announced earlier this year has been expanded to increase the wavelength coverage and be more detailed. With high sensitivity, Webb photographed Uranus's faint inner and outer rings, as well as the closest planet and extremely faint Zeta ring, and also photographed 14 of the 27 known moons.
Located about 2.9 billion kilometers from the Sun, Uranus is the seventh planet in the solar system and was discovered by William Herschel in 1781 as the first planet to be discovered by a telescope. Uranus orbits the Sun for about 17 hours a day and orbits the Sun for about 84 Earth years, making it the third largest planet in the solar system, surrounded by 13 faint rings and 27 moons. Uranus is a calm, solid blue sphere visible at the wavelengths seen by Voyager 2, but in the infrared band, Webb reveals a strange and dynamic world of ice, full of exciting atmospheric features, most notably the seasonal Arctic canopy.
Compared to earlier this year, the details are easier to see, including the bright white inner crown and the dark channel leading to the lower latitudes at the base of the polar crown, and several bright storms near and below the southern boundary of the polar crown, the number and frequency and location of Uranus' atmosphere, possibly due to a combination of seasonality and meteorology.
Widefield view of Uranus captured by the near-infrared camera of the Webb Space Telescope.
When the poles of Uranus begin to point towards the Sun, the crown of the poles becomes prominent, so Uranus approaches the summer solstice and receives more sunlight. Uranus will usher in the summer solstice in 2028, and astronomers are eager to observe any changes in the structure of these features, and Webb will help unravel the seasonal and meteorological effects that affect Uranus' storms, which are critical to understanding Uranus' complex atmosphere.
***nasa/esa/csa/stsciļ¼