Mars
The James Webb Space Telescope continues its exploration of the Red Planet, sending raw images of Mars that provide a unique and detailed view of the Red Planet’s atmosphere.
The giant telescope, located about a million miles from Earth, gives scientists and the public a glimpse of Mars’ luminous disk, part of the planet’s sunlit side.
According to the British newspaper, “Daily Mail”, the first images of Mars were taken by the thermal camera “Nircam”, which depicts a region of the eastern half of the planet at two different wavelengths.
The planet is considered one of the brightest objects in the night sky; Due to its relative proximity to Earth, this poses a challenge to the James Webb Space Telescope, which was built to detect the faint light from distant galaxies in the universe.
The first image captured shows a surface reference map from NASA and the Mars Orbital Altimeter (MOLA) on the left, with two NIRCam thermal cameras.
The images also show rings from the “Huygens Crater” crater on the surface of Mars clearly, with many dark volcanic rocks from the known “Certis Major” dark spot, and a clear brightness also appears in the Hellas Basin.
It is reported that James Webb can capture images and spectra with the spectral resolution needed to study short-term phenomena such as dust storms, weather patterns and seasonal changes.
Last week, the telescope captured stunning new images of the Orion Nebula, which forms a mass of gas and stellar dust that resembles massive objects with wings and a bright star in the middle.
This nebula is located 1350 light years from planet Earth.