The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has a treat to celebrate the upcoming second anniversary of its launch. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), which operate the craft alongside the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), shared a recent image of the icy planet Uranus. The picture, resembling a glowing blue marble rippling into a black ocean, was funneled through the telescope’s infrared filters to capture wavelengths future space travelers wouldn’t see with the naked eye.
Compared with the generic-looking images of Uranus taken by Voyager 2 in the 1980s, the Webb telescope paints a more vivid picture. Capturing light in the infrared spectrum, the craft’s sensors reveal a “strange and dynamic ice world filled with exciting, atmospheric features,” as the team operating the telescope described it.
The JWST’s image showcases the planet’s rings surrounding the planet,…
