The vision of the ghostly cold planet and its ethereal rings is almost haunting in its clarity. The last time its rings were seen so clearly, some of which have not been seen at all, was during the Voyager 2 flyby in 1989, according to ESA. The new image not only reveals Neptune’s rings, but also its faint dust lanes as it traverses its 164-year orbit.
The planet does not have the influence of nearby neighbors like Venus and Mars or the largest residents of the solar system, Saturn and Jupiter. Still, it’s mysterious and beautiful. It is 30 times farther from the sun than Earth. At such a great distance, the sun is small and dim. ESA says midday on Neptune is about as bright as a “dim twilight” here on Earth.
The ice giant has typically been seen as a blue planet in Hubble Space Telescope images. Webb, however, sees the planet in near-infrared light (0.6 to 5 microns). So it doesn’t look blue in the new space telescope. The ESA says the planet’s methane gas absorbs so strongly that it appears dark at the wavelengths at which Webb sees it, except when high-altitude methane ice clouds are present. These clouds appear as bright streaks and spots, reflecting sunlight that hasn’t had a chance to be absorbed by the methane gas.