James Webb Glasses will restart studies of 'ice giants' in our Solar System

After carrying out the initial missions and sending us back amazing images of outer space, the James Webb Space Telescope will soon turn its attention to two "ice giants" in the system. Our Sun - Uranus and Neptune.

With Webb's ability to peer into deep space, this telescope will be especially valuable in understanding the details of these two planets. In the past, only a single spacecraft - Voyager 2 - flew by and briefly observed the two planets in the 1980s.

Since then, scientists have been forced to use a variety of telescopes to monitor the weather on these planets, and Webb will be an extremely valuable addition to the Uranus and Uranus research community. Neptune - provides data for studying the composition and temperature of each atmosphere from which it is possible to calculate and create the most accurate simulations of these two "ice giants".

Uranus was discovered by German astronomer William Herschel (1738-1822) by accident while observing the night sky with a telescope in 1781. He stated that Uranus is 10 times darker than the other planets and almost invisible to the naked eye. Uranus is also the only planet to take its name from a god in Greek mythology (Uranus) instead of in Roman mythology.

As the scientific community calls for missions to Uranus and Neptune, the Webb telescope is the tool to help us view these worlds in high definition to learn more about the differences. their difference from Jupiter and Saturn. Neptune and Uranus are smaller and also have less hydrogen and helium than Jupiter and Saturn.

Lead researcher Leigh Fletcher, a planetary scientist at the University of Leicester, UK, said: "The key thing that Webb was able to do was map the atmospheric temperature and chemical structure of the planet. they".

Physically, Uranus's mass is nearly 14.5 times greater than that of Earth, yet the lightest of the gas giants, which include Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. . The atmospheric temperature of Uranus is the coldest of all the planets in the Solar System when it is not lower than -224 degrees Celsius, while the lowest part of Earth's atmosphere is only -90 degrees Celsius. Many people think that because of its distance from the Sun, Uranus is cold, but this is not necessarily true because Neptune is the farthest planet, about 4.5 billion km from the Sun compared to 2.88 billion. km of Uranus.

"We think that the weather and climate of the ice giants will be fundamentally different from those of the gas giants," says Fletcher. "The main reason for that is that they are so far away. The sun, and the mix of gases in the atmosphere, is very different from that of Jupiter and Saturn."

Webb's mid-infrared wavelength range will allow investigators to distinguish between gases in the two planets' upper atmospheres and figure out how sunlight affects their production ( if).

The studies are being carried out through a program of assured time observations with Webb, led by Webb interdisciplinary scientist Heidi Hammel. Hammel is also a renowned STScI planetary scientist for decades of telescope and spacecraft observations of Uranus and Neptune, including with Voyager 2.

Neptune is the eighth and most distant planet from the Sun in the Solar System. It is the fourth largest planet in diameter and the third largest by mass. This planet has the highest density of any gaseous planets in the solar system. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and slightly more massive than Uranus (approximately 15 times that of Earth). Neptune orbits the Sun at an average distance of 30.1 AU, about 30 times the Earth-Sun distance.

Neptune was the first planet found by theoretical calculations. Based on the unusual perturbation of Uranus's orbit, astronomer Alexis Bouvard concluded that its orbit is perturbed due to gravitational interactions with a certain planet. On September 23, 1846, astronomer Johann Galle discovered Neptune at a position 1 degree away from Urbain Le Verrier's prediction. Shortly after, Triton was also discovered, Neptune's largest moon, while its remaining 13 moons were discovered only in the twentieth century. To date, the Voyager 2 spacecraft is the only spacecraft to fly by Neptune on August 25, 1989.