The Webb Space Telescope has been hard at work examining the farthest reaches of the universe, returning one star image of the universe after another. On Monday, NASA officials released the first images of Mars taken by the observatory, a scientific win in itself. Because Webb was designed to search for stars in the far corners of the universe, Mars’ proximity and brightness posed major challenges in collecting data and images of the cosmic body.
“Web instruments are so sensitive that without special observing techniques, the bright infrared light coming from Mars would lead to blindness, causing a phenomenon known as ‘detector saturation,'” NASA said in a blog post Monday. using very short exposures, measuring only some of the light hitting the detectors, and applying special techniques to analyze the data.”
From a website in space, the observatory can study meteorological events on Mars including dust storms and weather patterns. The images above were taken using two separate instruments aboard Webb, NIRCam (near infrared camera) and NIRSpec (near infrared spectrometer.
“Darker and colder regions, such as the poles of Mars and the Northern Hemisphere, are represented by purple and red. Orange and yellow represent brighter and warmer regions. There is a large yellow portion in the left half where the sun is almost at the top. An orange spot within this yellow is a basin Hellas, darker due to atmospheric effects,” NASA says of the images taken by the NIRCam.
He adds to the NIRSpec image, “Webb’s NIRSpec instrument detected signals of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and water. By analyzing this data, scientists can also learn more about dust, clouds, and characteristics of the Martian surface.”
Earlier this month, Webb officials confirmed that they would release new images from a new observatory every two weeks as scientists continued their observations using the telescope.
For more images from the Webb Space Telescope and other cosmic stories, check out the ComicBook Invasion Center here.
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