Although the global ocean exists beneath an ice shell, the moon’s rocky core may warm the ocean enough to make it habitable for life, if it exists there.

But it’s one of several intriguing ocean worlds in our solar system where scientists think they have the best chance of finding life beyond Earth. “The water plume extends far beyond its release region at the southern pole.”Įnceladus is a tiny moon, only about 4% the size of Earth and measuring 313 miles (503.7 kilometers) across.

It was just so shocking to detect a water plume more than 20 times the size of the moon,” said lead study author Geronimo Villanueva, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement. “When I was looking at the data, at first, I was thinking I had to be wrong. The inset image, taken by the Cassini orbiter, shows how small Enceladus appears compared with the water plume. What appears at first as a star is actually Neptune’s unusual moon, Triton.The James Webb Space Telescope captured a a water vapor plume jetting from the south pole of Enceladus. The most striking of these is a large and unusual point of light some distance from the ice giant. Webb also managed to capture seven of Neptune’s 14 known moons. Due to Neptune’s 164-year orbit, this pole is just out of view for astronomers. The new image reveals some intriguing brightness at the planet’s northern pole. That’s because these two telescopes looked at the planet in different wavelengths of light. Hubble’s view of this planet looks pretty different from new image, on the right. However, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) captures objects in a different wavelength to Hubble, so Neptune appears in a brighter colour. This also explains Neptune’s signature blue appearance in Hubble Space Telescope images, which is caused by small amounts of gaseous methane. The planet is richer in heavy elements than our gas giants Jupiter and Saturn. Neptune is characterised as an ice giant due to its interior chemical make-up. “It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we’ve seen them in the infrared,” said Heidi Hammel, a Neptune system expert and interdisciplinary scientist for Webb. The new image also shows the planet’s fainter dust bands. NASA said the image gives us the clearest view of Neptune’s rings in more than 30 years, since the Voyager 2’s observation back in 1989. The image shows the planet in a unique light, with some of its moons making an appearance. James Webb has captured a striking new image of Neptune, the distant ice giant in our solar system. But the powerful space observatory isn’t taking time off, as it shifts its gaze to another planet in our solar system. New images of Mars were released this week from the James Webb Space Telescope. The latest image of our solar system’s most distant planet shows Neptune’s rings and seven of its moons, including the unusual Triton.

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