The James Webb Telescope from NASA continue to amaze astronomers. It is so powerful that it can see not only the titan moon of Saturn, too their clouds and one of his mares.
It may surprise you that we talk about seas, rains, cloudsit is included rivers and lakeswhen we talk about the titan moon. It is the only place in the Solar System, along with Earth, that has them. But they are not made of water, but of hydrocarbons: methane, ethane, etc. It is a toxic atmosphere for humans.
A group of astronomers headed by the Dutch professor Imke de Pater decided a few days ago to launch an experiment: Observe the titan moon with the James Webb Telescopeand only one day later with the Keck Terrestrial Telescopein Hawaii.
The James Webb is so powerful that it can catch the cloudsit is included a sea of Titan. Although it must be said that the Keck Terrestrial Telescope, you can do it too. Here are the two photos, taken 30 hours apart:
The images are quite similar. You can see a couple of clouds that have moved slightly, and even a methane sea on top.
But what makes the difference is that the James Webb from NASA It is also an infrared telescopeand can perform data captures that no other telescope can.
Here we can see, on the left, the infrared image from James Webb’s NIRCam cameraand on the right a standard image, where two clouds can be seen, and the Mar del Kraken:
What brings the James Webbwhich no other telescope can achieve, is that it shows data from the atmosphere goes down y the height of the cloudsamong others.
Mixing all the data, astronomers have come up with the more information from titan moon since the probe Cassini visited her in 2017.
They cannot be overcome until the probe Dragonfly visit Titanin 2032. Meanwhile, the telescopeJames Webb He will continue to fascinate us with his incredible images that are revolutionizing astronomy.