The James Webb Space Telescope has released its first images of Mars, offering a unique and more detailed look at the Red Planet’s atmosphere.
The giant telescope, nearly a million miles from Earth, is giving scientists and the public a glimpse of Mars’ observable disk — that is, the portion of the planet’s sunlit side that faces it.
Webb’s first images of Mars were taken by his near-infrared (NIRCam) camera. They show a region of the planet’s eastern hemisphere at two different wavelengths, or colors, of infrared light.
The Red Planet is one of the brightest objects in the night sky due to its relative proximity to Earth, but this poses challenges for the JWST – which was built to detect the faintest light from distant galaxies in the Universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope has released its first images of Mars. The first image on the left shows a surface reference map from NASA and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) with overlaid fields of view from the two Webb NIRCam instruments. Webb’s two near-infrared images are shown on the right
The first image on the left shows a surface reference map from NASA and the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) with overlaid fields of view from the two Webb NIRCam instruments. Webb’s two near-infrared images are shown on the right.
The shorter wavelength NIRCam image is dominated by reflected sunlight and therefore shows surface detail similar to visible-light images.
The rings of Huygens Crater (the planet’s fifth-largest impact crater, named after astronomer Christiaan Huygens), the dark volcanic rocks of Syrtis Major (a well-known dark spot), and the brightening in the Hellas Basin are all visible in this image. The basin is the largest well-preserved impact structure on Mars, spanning more than 1,200 miles, the space agency notes.
When the light emitted by the planet passes through the Martian atmosphere, some of it is absorbed by carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules, making the Hellas Basin appear darker than the surrounding area due to this effect.
The Red Planet is one of the brightest objects in the night sky due to its relative proximity to Earth, but this poses challenges for the JWST – which was built to detect the faintest light from distant galaxies in the universe
Shown in this image are the rings of Huygens Crater, the dark volcanic rocks of Syrtis Major, and the brightening in the Hellas Basin. The basin is the largest well-preserved impact structure on Mars, spanning more than 1,200 miles, the space agency notes
“This isn’t actually a thermal effect at Hellas,” explains lead investigator Geronimo Villanueva of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who developed these Webb observations.
“The Hellas Basin is at a lower elevation and therefore experiences higher air pressure. This higher pressure leads to suppression of thermal emission in this particular wavelength range due to an effect called pressure broadening. It will be very interesting to distinguish these competing effects in this data.’
Villanueva and his team also published Webb’s first near-infrared spectrum of Mars, showing tiny variations in brightness between hundreds of different wavelengths.
“This isn’t actually a thermal effect at Hellas,” explains lead investigator Geronimo Villanueva of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, who developed these Webb observations
“The Hellas Basin is at a lower elevation and therefore experiences higher air pressure. This higher pressure leads to suppression of thermal emission in this particular wavelength range due to an effect called pressure broadening. It will be very interesting to distinguish these competing effects in this data.
“Preliminary analysis of the spectrum reveals a variety of spectral features that contain information about dust, ice clouds, what type of rocks are on the planet’s surface, and the composition of the atmosphere,” says NASA.
“The spectral signatures — including deep valleys known as absorption features — of water, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide are easily discerned with Webb.”
The US space agency also noted that Webb’s instruments are so sensitive that they require special techniques to avoid what is known as “detector saturation” due to the bright infrared light from Mars.
Astronomers can anticipate this by using short exposures to measure just a portion of the light hitting the detectors and employing “special data analysis techniques”.
“Preliminary analysis of the spectrum reveals a variety of spectral features that contain information about dust, ice clouds, what type of rocks are on the planet’s surface, and the composition of the atmosphere,” says NASA
NASA explained the telescope’s perspective in a statement: “Webb can acquire images and spectra with the spectral resolution needed to study short-term phenomena such as dust storms, weather patterns, seasonal changes and, in a single observation, processes occurring at different times.” take place (day, sunset and night) of a Martian day.’
The new images use data from Webb Science, which is a work-in-progress and has not yet been peer-reviewed.
Last week, the Webb captured a stunning image of the Orion Nebula, which formed 4.5 billion years ago.
This image showed an open cluster of young massive stars, with their intense radiation and dense filaments forming the cloud of dust and gas that could play a key role in the birth of new stars.
The nebula was previously photographed by the Hubble telescope in 2004, but that device uses visible light and its view was obscured by the large amounts of stardust.
However, JWST detects the infrared light of the cosmos, allowing observers to see through these layers of dust and peer into its cosmic center – a region only now seen with human eyes.
Last week, the Webb captured a stunning image of the Orion Nebula, formed 4.5 billion years ago (above).
This image showed an open cluster of young massive stars, with their intense radiation and dense filaments forming the cloud of dust and gas that could play a key role in the birth of new stars