An image of the rings of the planet Saturn like we’ve never seen her before, she pulled out her space telescope NASA James Webb. In the photo, the rings glow, forming something like a “halo” around the massive planet.

In the high-resolution image of Saturn, three of its satellites – Dione, Enceladus and Tethys – can be seen as “fireflies”.

This particular image was captured on June 25, inside the “eyes” of Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), which uses infrared thermal imaging technology.

Saturn itself appears dark in this telescope’s infrared wavelength, as the methane in the planet’s atmosphere absorbs nearly all of the sunlight that diffuses into the atmosphere. However, the icy rings remain relatively bright, leading to Saturn’s unusual appearance in Webb. This new image of Saturn shows details within the ring system of the planet.

The spectacular rings around Saturn were observed first by Galileo, who, unable to explain what he saw, as well as the phenomenon of the rings “disappearing” by periods, thought it was three bodies. The phenomenon of “disappearance” was explained in 1666 by the Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens, who explained that the rings seemed to disappear whenever the plane they were on coincided with the plane of their observation from Earth. Huyhens was also the first to introduce the hypothesis that the rings were not all solid bodies but consisted of smaller bodies in orbit around the planet.

The rings divided into several regions with spaces between them taking names of letters of the Latin alphabet starting with the nearest A. The most prominent (in width) are rings A and B which are the brightest and ring C which is faintest. The best-known gap between the rings is the Cassini gap that separates the A ring from the B ring. It was discovered by Giovanni Cassini in 1675, from whom it got its name. In 1837 the astronomer Johann Enke noticed a smaller gap in about the middle of the A ring where it also got its name (Enke gap). Saturn’s E ring consists of material – water ice and organic compounds – ejected from the moon Enceladus in the form of jets.

Saturn’s widest ring was discovered in 2009 by NASA’s Spitzer telescope. Its maximum diameter is 20 times the diameter of Saturn.

– wikipedia