No, you could never see the gas giant Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, like this with your own eyes. This image was shot with an instrument on the James Webb space telescope that looks into thermal radiation.
Amateur astronomer Judy Schmidt, together with planetary scientist Ricardo Hueso, delved into the raw data and molded two spectacular images of the gas giant that immediately went around the world this week. First of all, of course, simply because the image is so enchantingly beautiful, although the colors shown, as with all images by James Webb, are only a ‘translation’ of the heat radiation that the telescope actually observes.
Yet the photo is more than just beautiful. The more experienced viewer immediately sees special details: auroras at both the north and south poles, for example, nebulae hanging around the poles and of course the iconic Great Red Spot (here white by the way), the largest storm in the solar system.
Even the thin light from Jupiter’s rings is visible, something we usually associate mostly with that other gas giant, Saturn. Logical, by the way: normally those rings are a million times weaker than the light of the planet itself.