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The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a new stunning image of ice giant Uranus, with almost all its faint dusty rings on display.
The image is representative of the telescope’s significant sensitivity, NASA said, as the fainter rings have only been captured previously by the Voyager 2 spacecraft and the W.M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaii.
Webb telescope details weather patterns on a distant planet with two suns
Uranus has 13 known rings, with 11 of them visible in the new Webb image. Nine rings are classified as the main rings, while the other two are harder to capture due to their dusty makeup and were not discovered until the Voyager 2 mission’s flyby in 1986. Two other, faint outer rings not shown in this latest image were discovered in 2007 from images taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and scientists hope Webb will capture them in the future.

A November Hubble image of Uranus (left) captured the planet's bright polar cap, while the recent Webb image displayed more detail, with a subtle enhanced brightness at the cap's center.
“The ring system of a planet tells us a lot about its origins and formation,” said Dr. Naomi Rowe-Gurney, a postdoctoral research scientist and solar system ambassador for the Webb space telescope at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, via email.
“Uranus is such a strange world with its sideways tilt and lack of internal heat that any clues we can get about its history are very valuable.”
Scientists anticipate that future Webb images will be able to capture all 13 rings. Rowe-Gurney also expects the telescope to uncover more on Uranus’ atmospheric composition, helping scientists better understand this unusual gas giant.
The space observatory’s powerful Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam, can detect infrared light otherwise not visible to astronomers.
“The JWST gives us the ability to look at both Uranus and Neptune in a completely new way because we have never had a telescope of this size that looks in the infrared,” Rowe-Gurney said. “The infrared can show us new depths and features that are difficult to see from the ground with the atmosphere in the way and invisible to telescopes that look in visible light like Hubble.”