When Nobel laureate John C. Mather was giving lectures on… James Webb Space Telescopehe often used an impressive analogy – that the observatory was so sensitive, it could detect the heat of a bumblebee as far away as the Earth. moon.
This is because WEB, which is a collaboration of NASA European and Canadian space NASA was created to observe the oldest, faintest light in the universe — galaxies and stars that formed only a few hundred million years ago. Big bang.
But there’s a paradox to having the world’s most powerful infrared telescope in space: While Webb is exceptional at seeing unfathomably distant objects, it struggles to capture images of objects in the cosmic backyard, like Mars and Saturn.
Because the planets in our solar system are so bright, they flood the telescope’s sensors with more light than they can handle. To get these shots, astronomers had to use dark filters – similar to wearing Solar eclipse glasses — To avoid blinding the camera.
Now, telescope operators have a workaround, one that doesn’t require astronauts to visit the spacecraft a million miles away for maintenance. Instead, engineers are sending a software update from Earth that will allow Webb to image the bright planets without throwing away useful data.
The new reading method is called “Super bar“It should allow Webb to image targets that are 100 or more times brighter than he could handle before,” said Brian Holler, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
Even Holler took over Jupiter Photos with Webb in 2022 He admits those first photos were a blurry mess. This is because the camera took several seconds to read the entire image while the planet’s fast-moving clouds were moving. Those Test pictures Their goal was to evaluate how much unwanted stray light Webb would see when Jupiter moved into the camera’s detector.
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Early images of Jupiter and its moon Europa were blurry and overexposed, highlighting the challenges the James Webb Space Telescope faces in capturing images of bright Solar System objects.
Image source: NASA/ESA/CSA/B. Holler/J. Stansberry
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Image source: NASA/ESA/CSA/B. Holler/J. Stansberry
Webb later produced more attractive images of Jupiter using shorter exposures and more selective settings.
“The beautiful images of Jupiter that are out there from people who really know how to process images, they were actually able to de-blur some of those images using the data,” Holler told Mashable.
But sharpening software can’t rescue light that wasn’t recorded in the first place. Until now, scientists have tried to solve the problem by cropping the camera view into a small box to limit incoming light. The new superline technology is an upgrade: Instead of taking a single photo, the camera scans the planet in thin slices, stealing many quick glances.
Since the camera captures each individual slice in a split second, it is not dazzled by glare. Plus, quick snapshots mean there’s little time to make changes Extraterrestrial storms or aurora To blur the shot. Then, the software stitches the slides together into one clear image.
Although Webb was not built to look at our solar system, many astronomers are keen to use it to study nearby worlds anyway. Web Biggest advantage It is his position: he can look out into the universe without the earth’s air getting in his way.
Advanced sharpening software can greatly enhance the bright, blurry images of the solar system captured by Webb, but image processing cannot recover light that was never recorded.
Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Ricardo Hueso / Emke De Pater / Thierry Fouchette / Lee Fletcher / Michael Wong / Joseph DePasquale
“A lot of it tends to go back to that unpleasant atmosphere,” Holler said. “It’s good for breathing and everything, but when you really want to study surfaces or atmospheres, you have to leave [our] “Atmosphere.”
Even giant telescopes on Earth have difficulty seeing through Earth’s blanket of air, which absorbs certain types of light before it can reach the telescopes’ lenses.
Researchers say this new program could open the door to new discoveries. A striped-style camera trick can capture rare moments, such as when a giant planet, one of its moons, or even its rings briefly obscures a background star, giving scientists clearer measurements of their sizes and atmospheres.
It will also allow astronomers to observe Exoplanets Orbiting very bright stars outside our solar system, e.g 55 Kankri EWorld of Burning Lava 41 Light year far.
The supertape reading capability is scheduled to be introduced with Webb’s next monitoring cycle, which begins next July. For the rest of us, just sit back and relax: clearer views of our cosmic neighbors are on the way.
