Scientists released the footage Monday of the solar system’s largest planet. The James Webb Space Telescope took the pictures in July, capturing unprecedented views of Jupiter’s northern and southern lights and swirling polar fog. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm large enough to engulf Earth, stands out starkly next to countless smaller storms. A wide-field image is particularly dramatic, showing the faint rings around the planet, as well as two tiny moons against a sparkling background of galaxies. “We’ve never seen Jupiter like this. It’s all incredible,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, of the University of California, Berkeley, who helped with the observations. “We didn’t really expect it to be this good, to be honest.” The infrared images were artificially colored in blue, white, green, yellow and orange, according to the American-French research team, to distinguish the features. The $10 billion successor to NASA and the European Space Agency’s Hubble Space Telescope was launched by rocket late last year and has been observing the universe in infrared since the summer. Scientists hope to see the dawn of the universe with Webb, looking back to the time when the first stars and galaxies formed 13.7 billion years ago. The observatory is located 1.6 million kilometers from Earth.
