reveals the latest, greatest details of the ice giant's atmosphere, moons, and rings in infrared wavelengths.
Some of those details – for example, faint bands of dust that encircle Neptune – haven't been brought to light since the"It has been three decades since we last saw those faint, dusty bands, and this is the first time we've seen them in the infrared," astronomer Heidi Hammel, an interdisciplinary scientist on the JWST team who specializes in Neptune,In visible-light pictures, Neptune shows up as a deep blue dot, thanks to the methane in its atmosphere.
The full picture shows seven of Neptune's 14 known moons, including a sparkling point of light that is Neptune's largest moon,The Neptune system. In the upper-left is Neptune moon's Triton, sporting Webb's distinctive eight diffraction spikes, an artifact of the telescope's structure.