Neptune and its rings haven’t looked this good in decades. NASA released glowing new footage of our solar system’s outermost planet on Wednesday taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. The images taken in July show not only Neptune’s thin rings, but also its faint dust lanes, never before seen in the infrared, and seven of its 14 known moons. Webb showed Jupiter at its best in a series of fresh photos released last month. Launched less than a year ago, the $10 billion Webb spends most of its time looking much deeper into the universe. Astronomers hope to see back almost to the beginning of time when the first stars and galaxies formed. NASA’s Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft to see Neptune in all its gaseous glory, during a flyby in 1989. No other spacecraft has visited the icy, blue planet. So it’s been three decades since astronomers last saw these rings in such detail and clarity, said Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute, a planetary astronomer working with Webb. Hammel tweeted that she cried when she saw the rings, screaming and making “my kids, my mom, and even my cats look.” Webb is the largest, most powerful telescope in the world, operating 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth. It was launched into space last December. The observatory is healthy, according to NASA, except for one object. NASA reported this week that a mechanism on one of Webb’s instruments showed signs of increased friction late last month in one of four observing modes. Comments are pending on this particular observation piece as a review committee decides on a way forward. —— The Associated Press Health and Science Section is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Education Division. AP is solely responsible for all content
