Additionally, Webb offers exceptional stability, which means it can point at a target and not waver, thanks to its positioning in space. “We can observe at some of these wavelengths from the ground, but the Earth’s atmosphere is so turbulent that what we get on the ground, we can’t calibrate the observations very well.” That means more uncertainty in the data a problem which is exacerbated by the background infrared radiation on Earth.īut with a space-based telescope like James Webb, there’s no atmosphere and less background radiation to get in the way, and that means the data gathered will be much more accurate. “The biggest advantage is at the mid-infrared wavelengths,” de Pater explained. Particularly useful for this research will be the mid-infrared wavelengths, which can be viewed using Webb’s MIRI or Mid-Infrared Instrument. how much ‘light’ is absorbed at the particular wavelength determines how deep one can look into the planet).” At different wavelengths you can see different altitudes in the atmosphere, depending on the opacity in the atmosphere (i.e. “At infrared wavelengths, you can probe above the clouds and below the clouds, depending on the wavelength. “In the visible wavelength range, you basically see clouds,” she explained. Those capabilities make it possible to study the atmosphere beyond what would be possible by looking in the visible light wavelength. To help learn about these complex topics, de Pater’s group will be taking advantage of James Webb’s infrared capabilities, which allow researchers to look deeper into the planet’s atmosphere. ![]() Taken as a whole, the Jovian system is the ideal place to test the limits of Webb’s capabilities. ![]() They’ll also be looking at the whole Jovian system, including the planet’s faint rings and its moons including Io and Ganymede.Įach of these targets is intriguing in its own right - Io is the most volcanically active place in the solar system, for example, and Ganymede is the only moon known to produce its own magnetosphere. NASA/JPL/Space Science Instituteīut the group won’t only be looking at Jupiter itself, honing in on details like the Great Red Spot (a turbulent storm so vast that it can be seen as a spot large enough to engulf the entire Earth) and the planet’s southern pole (with its distinctive auroras). Some of the biggest open questions we have about Jupiter concern its atmosphere, like how heat moves between layers in the atmosphere, and how the atmosphere interacts with the magnetosphere. “But every time you learn more there are things you don’t yet understand - so you always need more data.” “We’ve been there with several spacecraft and have observed the planet with Hubble and many ground-based telescopes at wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum (from the UV to meters wavelengths), so we’ve learned a tremendous amount about Jupiter itself, its atmosphere, interior, and about its moons and rings,” said de Pater. We have troves of data about the planet thanks to both observations from ground-based telescopes and missions like Galileo, which orbited the planet up until 2003, and Juno which is still orbiting there now.īut as is often the case with science, every piece of data we get about the planet can raise more questions. A whole system to explore NASAĬompared to far-off exoplanets or even the more distant ice giant planets in our solar system, astronomers know a lot about Jupiter. To learn about what researchers hope to discover about this big, beautiful gas giant, and to find out why such a relatively close target is being used to test out such a powerful telescope, we spoke to Berkeley astronomer Imke de Pater, leader of the Jupiter observation team. ![]() Thirteen projects have been chosen to test out the capabilities of this brand-new telescope in its first five months of operations, and as you can imagine, the competition for which projects should get first dibs on this new tool was fierce. The scientific successor to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built. NASA technicians lift the James Webb Telescope, using a crane, and move it inside a clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. It will usher in a new era of astronomical observations and could help to investigate topics as wide-ranging as how the first galaxies formed and whether planets in other star systems have atmospheres or not. And this is where things get exciting, as the telescope’s high sensitivity and infrared capabilities will enable it to observe extremely distant objects, even fainter than those observed by current space-based telescopes like Hubble. Studying planets in our solar system and beyondĪs soon as the commissioning phase is complete, which is set to wrap up this summer, the science observations will begin.
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