Jupiter appears in the first photographs from the James Webb Telescope

The 60-page James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) commissioning report includes two new photos of Jupiter. Its moons Europa, Thebes and Metis appear.

Bright snapshots of the gas giant were captured by the telescope’s NIRCam instrument. The report says the images “demonstrate that JWST can be tracked Moves targets even in scattered light A Bright Jovian Planet”.

NASA selected nine targets to test Telescopic ability To track fast moving objects moving at 67 milliseconds per second.

Other onboard instruments tested include the Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which detect and confirm different wavelengths.

Jupiter was the slowest targetMoving at just 3.3 milliseconds per second, all tests were successful.

These pictures also prove it Ability to grasp details Like rings and moons around bright planets.

The commissioning report explains: “Observing a bright planet and its satellites and rings was expected to be challenging due to scattered light that could affect the science instrument, but the best guidance sensor (FGS) should observe guide stars near the bright planet. .

These observations verify the expectation that the guide star acquisition will be successful as long as Jupiter is at least 140, consistent with the preflight model from the FGS (Fine Guidance Sensor).

The success of this experiment opens the possibility for the telescope to observe near-Earth asteroids (NEAs), comets and other interstellar objects.