Saturn

by Ram Vasudev

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3879.000 x 2181.000 pixels

Title

Saturn

Artist

Ram Vasudev

Medium

Photograph

Description

This is a significantly enhanced image of the ringed world of Saturn captured recently by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera at a wavelength of 3.23 microns. I have modified the original raw NASA image to enhance the overall colors, beauty, balance and luminosity, in order to provide you a breathtaking, high quality, fine art print through this website.

Saturn itself appears extremely dark at the 3.23 microns wavelength observed by the telescope, as methane gas absorbs almost all of the sunlight falling on the atmosphere. However, the icy rings stay relatively bright, leading to the unusual appearance of Saturn in this image. The image was taken to test the telescope’s capacity to detect faint moons around the planet and its bright rings. The image clearly shows details of the Saturn’s ring system, along with several of the planet’s moons – Dione, Enceladus, and Tethys (seen as dots on the left in this image).
When comparing the northern and southern poles of the planet in this image, the differences in appearance are typical with known seasonal changes on the planet. For example, Saturn is currently experiencing northern summertime, with the southern hemisphere emerging from the darkness at the end of a winter. However, the northern pole is particularly dark, possibly due to an unknown seasonal process affecting polar aerosols. A tiny hint of brightening towards the edge of Saturn’s disk are thought to be due to high-altitude methane fluorescence (light emission after absorption), and/or emission from the trihydrogen ion (H3+) in the ionosphere.

Uploaded

July 13th, 2023

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