Neptune and its rings glow an eerie white in this new Webb image
When it comes to planetary rings, Saturn is the king. But now a new contender enters the ring, courtesy of a stunning image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Astronomers have known for decades that the ice giant, located about 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth, has five rings made chiefly of icy dust. The new image reveals those frigid rings in crisper detail than any survey since the Voyager 2 probe passed within a few thousand miles of Neptune in 1989. “In addition to several bright, narrow rings, the Webb images clearly show Neptune’s fainter dust bands,” researchers wrote. “Webb’s extremely stable and precise image quality permits these very faint rings to be detected so close to Neptune.”