James Webb Space Telescope captures clear images of Neptune's rings

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured the best images of Neptune, the most distant planet in our solar system. The near-infrared images clearly show the icy planet's rings.

Interestingly, the planet does not look blue at these wavelengths: it absorbs so much infrared and visible red light that it looks dark and ghostly. The bright spots and stripes on the planet are methane-ice clouds.

Seven of Neptune's 14 confirmed satellites can also be seen in the image: Triton (the 'star' you can see at the top of the image), Galatea, Naiad, Thalassa, Despina, Proteus, and Larissa. Triton is so bright in the picture because of the characteristic bursts of diffraction from the James Webb telescope, but the fact that the satellite's surface consists of condensed nitrogen, which reflects about 70% of the sun's light also played a role.

Neptune is about 2.8 billion miles from the Sun. This planet has very low temperatures, much lower than other planets in the system. And it has a very long orbit – 164 years.

And Triton's strange retrograde orbit suggests that Triton may be a Kuiper Belt object that has succumbed to Neptune's gravitational pull.

Scientists have only recently begun to explore the solar system with the James Webb telescope, and they hope to gather more data on Neptune and Triton within the next year. As with Mars and Jupiter, astronomers are still collecting preliminary data at this point. And it's hard to say yet when data will become available that will give us more accurate knowledge of Neptune in particular and the cosmos in general.