Members Can Post Anonymously On This Site
Jaw-dropping Images: Uranus' Hidden Rings and Moons
-
Similar Topics
-
By NASA
5 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s SPHEREx, which will map millions of galaxies across the entire sky, captured one of its first exposures March 27. The observatory’s six detectors each captured one of these uncalibrated images, to which visible-light colors have been added to represent infrared wavelengths. SPHEREx’s complete field of view spans the top three images; the same area of the sky is also captured in the bottom three images. NASA/JPL-Caltech Processed with rainbow hues to represent a range of infrared wavelengths, the new pictures indicate the astrophysics space observatory is working as expected.
NASA’s SPHEREx (short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) has turned on its detectors for the first time in space. Initial images from the observatory, which launched March 11, confirm that all systems are working as expected.
Although the new images are uncalibrated and not yet ready to use for science, they give a tantalizing look at SPHEREx’s wide view of the sky. Each bright spot is a source of light, like a star or galaxy, and each image is expected to contain more than 100,000 detected sources.
There are six images in every SPHEREx exposure — one for each detector. The top three images show the same area of sky as the bottom three images. This is the observatory’s full field of view, a rectangular area about 20 times wider than the full Moon. When SPHEREx begins routine science operations in late April, it will take approximately 600 exposures every day.
Each image in this uncalibrated SPHEREx exposure contains about 100,000 light sources, including stars and galaxies. The two insets at right zoom in on sections of one image, showcasing the telescope’s ability to capture faint, distant galaxies. These sections are processed in grayscale rather than visible-light color for ease of viewing.NASA/JPL-Caltech “Our spacecraft has opened its eyes on the universe,” said Olivier Doré, SPHEREx project scientist at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, both in Southern California. “It’s performing just as it was designed to.”
The SPHEREx observatory detects infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. To make these first images, science team members assigned a visible color to every infrared wavelength captured by the observatory. Each of the six SPHEREx detectors has 17 unique wavelength bands, for a total of 102 hues in every six-image exposure.
Breaking down color this way can reveal the composition of an object or the distance to a galaxy. With that data, scientists can study topics ranging from the physics that governed the universe less than a second after its birth to the origins of water in our galaxy.
“This is the high point of spacecraft checkout; it’s the thing we wait for,” said Beth Fabinsky, SPHEREx deputy project manager at JPL. “There’s still work to do, but this is the big payoff. And wow! Just wow!”
During the past two weeks, scientists and engineers at JPL, which manages the mission for NASA, have executed a series of spacecraft checks that show all is well so far. In addition, SPHEREx’s detectors and other hardware have been cooling down to their final temperature of around minus 350 degrees Fahrenheit (about minus 210 degrees Celsius). This is necessary because heat can overwhelm the telescope’s ability to detect infrared light, which is sometimes called heat radiation. The new images also show that the telescope is focused correctly. Focusing is done entirely before launch and cannot be adjusted in space.
“Based on the images we are seeing, we can now say that the instrument team nailed it,” said Jamie Bock, SPHEREx’s principal investigator at Caltech and JPL.
How It Works
Where telescopes like NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes were designed to target small areas of space in detail, SPHEREx is a survey telescope and takes a broad view. Combining its results with those of targeted telescopes will give scientists a more robust understanding of our universe.
The observatory will map the entire celestial sky four times during its two-year prime mission. Using a technique called spectroscopy, SPHEREx will collect the light from hundreds of millions of stars and galaxies in more wavelengths any other all-sky survey telescope.
Track the real-time location of NASA’s SPHEREx space observatory using the agency’s 3D visualization tool, Eyes on the Solar System. When light enters SPHEREx’s telescope, it’s directed down two paths that each lead to a row of three detectors. The observatory’s detectors are like eyes, and set on top of them are color filters, which are like color-tinted glasses. While a standard color filter blocks all wavelengths but one, like yellow- or rose-tinted glasses, the SPHEREx filters are more like rainbow-tinted glasses: The wavelengths they block change gradually from the top of the filter to the bottom.
“I’m rendered speechless,” said Jim Fanson, SPHEREx project manager at JPL. “There was an incredible human effort to make this possible, and our engineering team did an amazing job getting us to this point.”
More About SPHEREx
The SPHEREx mission is managed by JPL for the agency’s Astrophysics Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. BAE Systems (formerly Ball Aerospace) built the telescope and the spacecraft bus. The science analysis of the SPHEREx data will be conducted by a team of scientists located at 10 institutions in the U.S., two in South Korea, and one in Taiwan. Caltech managed and integrated the instrument. Data will be processed and archived at IPAC at Caltech. The mission’s principal investigator is based at Caltech with a joint JPL appointment. The SPHEREx dataset will be publicly available at the NASA-IPAC Infrared Science Archive. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
For more about SPHEREx, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/spherex/
News Media Contact
Calla Cofield
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
626-808-2469
calla.e.cofield@jpl.nasa.gov
2025-045
Share
Details
Last Updated Apr 01, 2025 Related Terms
SPHEREx (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe and Ices Explorer) Astrophysics Galaxies Origin & Evolution of the Universe The Search for Life The Universe Explore More
3 min read Discovery Alert: Four Little Planets, One Big Step
The Discovery Four rocky planets much smaller than Earth orbit Barnard’s Star, the next closest…
Article 13 hours ago 5 min read NASA Awards Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships for 2025
The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) recently named 24 new fellows to its…
Article 1 day ago 2 min read Hubble Spots a Chance Alignment
The subject of today’s NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is the stunning spiral galaxy NGC…
Article 4 days ago Keep Exploring Discover Related Topics
Missions
Humans in Space
Climate Change
Solar System
View the full article
-
By NASA
Explore Hubble Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts News Hubble News Hubble News Archive Social Media Media Resources Multimedia Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 5 Min Read 20-Year Hubble Study of Uranus Yields New Atmospheric Insights
The image columns show the change of Uranus for the four years that STIS observed Uranus across a 20-year period. Over that span of time, the researchers watched the seasons of Uranus as the south polar region darkened going into winter shadow while the north polar region brightened as northern summer approaches. Credits:
NASA, ESA, Erich Karkoschka (LPL) The ice-giant planet Uranus, which travels around the Sun tipped on its side, is a weird and mysterious world. Now, in an unprecedented study spanning two decades, researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered new insights into the planet’s atmospheric composition and dynamics. This was possible only because of Hubble’s sharp resolution, spectral capabilities, and longevity.
The team’s results will help astronomers to better understand how the atmosphere of Uranus works and responds to changing sunlight. These long-term observations provide valuable data for understanding the atmospheric dynamics of this distant ice giant, which can serve as a proxy for studying exoplanets of similar size and composition.
When Voyager 2 flew past Uranus in 1986, it provided a close-up snapshot of the sideways planet. What it saw resembled a bland, blue-green billiard ball. By comparison, Hubble chronicled a 20-year story of seasonal changes from 2002 to 2022. Over that period, a team led by Erich Karkoschka of the University of Arizona, and Larry Sromovsky and Pat Fry from the University of Wisconsin used the same Hubble instrument, STIS (the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph), to paint an accurate picture of the atmospheric structure of Uranus.
Uranus’ atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, with a small amount of methane and traces of water and ammonia. The methane gives Uranus its cyan color by absorbing the red wavelengths of sunlight.
The Hubble team observed Uranus four times in the 20-year period: in 2002, 2012, 2015, and 2022. They found that, unlike conditions on the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter, methane is not uniformly distributed across Uranus. Instead, it is strongly depleted near the poles. This depletion remained relatively constant over the two decades. However, the aerosol and haze structure changed dramatically, brightening significantly in the northern polar region as the planet approaches its northern summer solstice in 2030.
The image columns show the change of Uranus for the four years that STIS observed Uranus across a 20-year period. Over that span of time, the researchers watched the seasons of Uranus as the south polar region darkened going into winter shadow while the north polar region brightened as northern summer approaches. NASA, ESA, Erich Karkoschka (LPL) Uranus takes a little over 84 Earth years to complete a single orbit of the Sun. So, over two decades, the Hubble team has only seen mostly northern spring as the Sun moves from shining directly over Uranus’ equator toward shining almost directly over its north pole in 2030. Hubble observations suggest complex atmospheric circulation patterns on Uranus during this period. The data that are most sensitive to the methane distribution indicate a downwelling in the polar regions and upwelling in other regions.
The team analyzed their results in several ways. The image columns show the change of Uranus for the four years that STIS observed Uranus across a 20-year period. Over that span of time, the researchers watched the seasons of Uranus as the south polar region (left) darkened going into winter shadow while the north polar region (right) brightened as it began to come into a more direct view as northern summer approaches.
The top row, in visible light, shows how the color of Uranus appears to the human eye as seen through even an amateur telescope.
In the second row, the false-color image of the planet is assembled from visible and near-infrared light observations. The color and brightness correspond to the amounts of methane and aerosols. Both of these quantities could not be distinguished before Hubble’s STIS was first aimed at Uranus in 2002. Generally, green areas indicate less methane than blue areas, and red areas show no methane. The red areas are at the limb, where the stratosphere of Uranus is almost completely devoid of methane.
The two bottom rows show the latitude structure of aerosols and methane inferred from 1,000 different wavelengths (colors) from visible to near infrared. In the third row, bright areas indicate cloudier conditions, while the dark areas represent clearer conditions. In the fourth row, bright areas indicate depleted methane, while dark areas show the full amount of methane.
At middle and low latitudes, aerosols and methane depletion have their own latitudinal structure that mostly did not change much over the two decades of observation. However, in the polar regions, aerosols and methane depletion behave very differently.
In the third row, the aerosols near the north pole display a dramatic increase, showing up as very dark during early northern spring, turning very bright in recent years. Aerosols also seem to disappear at the left limb as the solar radiation disappeared. This is evidence that solar radiation changes the aerosol haze in the atmosphere of Uranus. On the other hand, methane depletion seems to stay quite high in both polar regions throughout the observing period.
Astronomers will continue to observe Uranus as the planet approaches northern summer.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
Facebook logo @NASAHubble @NASAHubble Instagram logo @NASAHubble Related Images & Videos
20 Years of Uranus Observations
Share
Details
Last Updated Mar 31, 2025 Editor Andrea Gianopoulos Location NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Contact Media Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov
Ann Jenkins
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland
Related Terms
Hubble Space Telescope Astrophysics Division Goddard Space Flight Center Planetary Environments & Atmospheres Planetary Science Planets The Solar System Uranus
View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
Week in images: 24-28 March 2025
Discover our week through the lens
View the full article
-
By European Space Agency
Week in images: 17-21 March 2025
Discover our week through the lens
View the full article
-
By NASA
Explore This Section Webb News Latest News Latest Images Blog (offsite) Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Observatory Overview Launch Deployment Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module Multimedia About Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 5 Min Read NASA’s Webb Images Young, Giant Exoplanets, Detects Carbon Dioxide
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided the clearest look in the infrared yet at the iconic multi-planet system HR 8799. Full image below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, W. Balmer (JHU), L. Pueyo (STScI), M. Perrin (STScI) NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured direct images of multiple gas giant planets within an iconic planetary system. HR 8799, a young system 130 light-years away, has long been a key target for planet formation studies.
The observations indicate that the well-studied planets of HR 8799 are rich in carbon dioxide gas. This provides strong evidence that the system’s four giant planets formed much like Jupiter and Saturn, by slowly building solid cores that attract gas from within a protoplanetary disk, a process known as core accretion.
The results also confirm that Webb can infer the chemistry of exoplanet atmospheres through imaging. This technique complements Webb’s powerful spectroscopic instruments, which can resolve the atmospheric composition.
“By spotting these strong carbon dioxide features, we have shown there is a sizable fraction of heavier elements, like carbon, oxygen, and iron, in these planets’ atmospheres,” said William Balmer, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. “Given what we know about the star they orbit, that likely indicates they formed via core accretion, which is an exciting conclusion for planets that we can directly see.”
Balmer is the lead author of the study announcing the results published today in The Astrophysical Journal. Balmer and their team’s analysis also includes Webb’s observation of a system 97 light-years away called 51 Eridani.
Image A: HR 8799 (NIRCam Image)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided the clearest look in the infrared yet at the iconic multi-planet system HR 8799. The closest planet to the star, HR 8799 e, orbits 1.5 billion miles from its star, which in our solar system would be located between the orbit of Saturn and Neptune. The furthest, HR 8799 b, orbits around 6.3 billion miles from the star, more than twice Neptune’s orbital distance. Colors are applied to filters from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), revealing their intrinsic differences. A star symbol marks the location of the host star HR 8799, whose light has been blocked by the coronagraph. In this image, the color blue is assigned to 4.1 micron light, green to 4.3 micron light, and red to the 4.6 micron light. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, W. Balmer (JHU), L. Pueyo (STScI), M. Perrin (STScI) Image B: 51 Eridani (NIRCam Image)
Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured this image of 51 Eridani b (also referred to as 51 Eri b), a cool, young exoplanet that orbits 890 million miles from its star, similar to Saturn’s orbit in our solar system. The 51 Eridani system is 97 light-years from Earth. This image includes filters representing 4.1-micron light as red. The background red in this image is not light from other planets, but a result of light subtraction during image processing. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, W. Balmer (JHU), L. Pueyo (STScI), M. Perrin (STScI) HR 8799 is a young system about 30 million years old, a fraction of our solar system’s 4.6 billion years. Still hot from their tumultuous formation, the planets within HR 8799 emit large amounts of infrared light that give scientists valuable data on how they formed.
Giant planets can take shape in two ways: by slowly building solid cores with heavier elements that attract gas, just like the giants in our solar system, or when particles of gas rapidly coalesce into massive objects from a young star’s cooling disk, which is made mostly of the same kind of material as the star. The first process is called core accretion, and the second is called disk instability. Knowing which formation model is more common can give scientists clues to distinguish between the types of planets they find in other systems.
“Our hope with this kind of research is to understand our own solar system, life, and ourselves in the comparison to other exoplanetary systems, so we can contextualize our existence,” Balmer said. “We want to take pictures of other solar systems and see how they’re similar or different when compared to ours. From there, we can try to get a sense of how weird our solar system really is—or how normal.”
Image C: Young Gas Giant HR 8799 e (NIRCam Spectrum)
This graph shows a spectrum of one of the planets in the HR 8799 system, HR 8799 e. Spectral fingerprints of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide appear in data collected by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera). NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted (STScI) Of the nearly 6,000 exoplanets discovered, few have been directly imaged, as even giant planets are many thousands of times fainter than their stars. The images of HR 8799 and 51 Eridani were made possible by Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) coronagraph, which blocks light from bright stars to reveal otherwise hidden worlds.
This technology allowed the team to look for infrared light emitted by the planets in wavelengths that are absorbed by specific gases. The team found that the four HR 8799 planets contain more heavy elements than previously thought.
The team is paving the way for more detailed observations to determine whether objects they see orbiting other stars are truly giant planets or objects such as brown dwarfs, which form like stars but don’t accumulate enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion.
“We have other lines of evidence that hint at these four HR 8799 planets forming using this bottom-up approach” said Laurent Pueyo, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, who co-led the work. “How common is this for planets we can directly image? We don’t know yet, but we’re proposing more Webb observations to answer that question.”
“We knew Webb could measure colors of the outer planets in directly imaged systems,” added Rémi Soummer, director of STScI’s Russell B. Makidon Optics Lab and former lead for Webb coronagraph operations. “We have been waiting for 10 years to confirm that our finely tuned operations of the telescope would also allow us to access the inner planets. Now the results are in and we can do interesting science with it.”
The NIRCam observations of HR 8799 and 51 Eridani were conducted as part of Guaranteed Time Observations programs 1194 and 1412 respectively.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.
Downloads
Click any image to open a larger version.
View/Download all image products at all resolutions for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
View/Download the research results from The Astrophysical Journal.
Media Contacts
Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Hannah Braun – hbraun@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
Roberto Molar Candanosa
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.
Related Information
More Webb News
More Webb Images
Webb Science Themes
Webb Mission Page
Webb Blog: How Webb’s Coronagraphs Reveal Exoplanets in the Infrared
Video: Eclipse/Coronagraph Animation
Video: Exploring Star and Planet Formation
Learn more about gas giants
Related For Kids
What is the Webb Telescope?
SpacePlace for Kids
En Español
Ciencia de la NASA
NASA en español
Space Place para niños
Keep Exploring Related Topics
James Webb Space Telescope
Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the…
Exoplanets
Exoplanet Stories
Universe
Share
Details
Last Updated Mar 17, 2025 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Astrophysics Exoplanets Gas Giant Exoplanets Goddard Space Flight Center Science & Research The Universe View the full article
-
-
Check out these Videos
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.