Our Solar System Through the Eyes of The James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope is primarily an infrared observatory, giving us a new look at our solar systems’ familiar planets.

While famous Hubble and space probe images are taken in the visible light range, Webb looks at the heat signature of distant objects. The infrared radiation any given object gives off can tell us a lot of things we otherwise wouldn’t be able to see, and the planets are no exception.

Images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope of our solar system look a bit different than what we are used to. As mentioned above, infrared light is not visible to the human eye, so the colors shown are assigned based on how much infrared is detected in a given region. As such, all images taken by Webb of objects in our solar system are a false-color view allowing our eyes to make sense of the data.

Since Webb’s instruments are highly sensitive to infrared radiation, aka heat, they need to be kept incredibly cold to get an accurate read. Its built-in sunshield keeps the observatory at around -370° F (-223° C). Unfortunately, this also means that Webb’s highly sensitive instruments cannot be exposed to even a little sunlight, or they will be permanently damaged. As such, the James Webb Space Telescope cannot be pointed back to see Mercury, Venus, or even Earth. It has, however, already observed each of the other five planets in our solar system at least…