NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, which was launched in December 2021, recently captured its first images of our neighboring planet Mars.
These pictures of Mars were taken by James Webb on 5 September. These images show a portion of Mars' eastern hemisphere in two different wavelengths.
Why are Webb's photos of Mars so different?Mars is very close to Earth and is one of the brightest objects in the night sky in both visible and infrared light.
Whereas JWST is designed to see distant and faint objects in galaxies. Mars is relatively close and bright, so it is not an easy object to be captured by JWST .
The part of Mars captured by the James Webb Space Telescope is the brightest and hottest part of Mars.
The brightest region on Mars is where the Sun is almost overhead, that is, this part remains towards the Sun's light. That's why it's usually the hottest.
Brightness decreases toward the polar regions, which receive less sunlight, and the colder Northern Hemisphere emits less light. So those areas are less bright in the images.
This spectrum combines data measured by James Webb's NIRSPC instrument, showing traces of water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the Martian atmosphere.
The x-axis is the 'wavelength of light' in microns, which ranges from 1.0 to 5.0. The y-axis shows the 'brightness of light (reflected and emitted)', and goes from dim to bright from bottom to top.
James Webb's first images of Mars, captured by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), show a region of the planet's eastern hemisphere in two different wavelengths or colors of infrared light.
The picture to the left of the graphic shows a close-up of Mars as taken by Webb's NIRCAM instrument at shorter wavelengths of infrared light.
On the left is Huygens Crater, the dark volcano Syrtis Major, and the brighter Hellas Basin etc.The Hellas Basin is the largest well-preserved impact structure on Mars, extending over 2000 km.
The picture on the right is a 'heat map' taken by NIRCAM on longer wavelengths of infrared light. The brightest spot here is due to the Sun being almost over the head.
These images, taken by James Webb, will further help scientists study short-term events on Mars such as dust storms, weather patterns, and seasonal changes.
The minimum distance from Earth to Mars is approximately 54.6 million kilometers (33.9 million miles). However, this doesn't happen very often.
The James Webb Telescope was launched by the American space agency NASA with the help of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
The James Webb Space Telescope is orbiting near the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.