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Rainbow auroras, giant storms and far-off galaxies are all on display in the latest images of Jupiter from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

“We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, in a news release.

De Pater and Thierry Fouchet, a professor at the Paris Observatory, led observations of the largest planet in our solar system using the Webb telescope – which is itself an international endeavor by NASA with the European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency, NASA said.

Painting a picture that moves from orange and yellow at Jupiter’s poles to blues and purples toward the center, several images from the telescope came together to form an overall composite and give Earth a look at the gas giant.

You can also see faint rings and far off galaxies “photobombing” in the background, according to NASA.

And Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot – a storm big enough to engulf Earth – appears white in these images.

In a Webb NIRCam composite image, Jupiter's Great Red Spot (lower right) appears white.

“The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms,” said Heidi Hammel, Webb interdisciplinary scientist for solar system observations and vice president for science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.

Scientists collaborated with citizen scientist Judy Schmidt to translate data to form the composite images from the telescope, which help give a better look into Jupiter’s life, NASA said.

- Source: CNN " data-fave-thumbnails="{"big": { "uri": "https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220802105906-02-james-webb-cartwheel-galaxy-0802.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill" }, "small": { "uri": "https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220802105906-02-james-webb-cartwheel-galaxy-0802.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill" } }" data-vr-video="false" data-show-html=" Fareed Zakaria, GPS " data-byline-html="
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This image from Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) shows a group of galaxies, including a large distorted ring-shaped galaxy known as the Cartwheel. The Cartwheel Galaxy, located 500 million light-years away in the Sculptor constellation, is composed of a bright inner ring and an active outer ring. While this outer ring has a lot of star formation, the dusty area in between reveals many stars and star clusters. The mid-infrared light captured by MIRI reveals fine details about these dusty regions and young stars within the Cartwheel Galaxy, which are rich in hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds, as well as silicate dust, like much of the dust on Earth. Young stars, many of which are present in the bottom right of the outer ring, energise surrounding hydrocarbon dust, causing it to glow orange. On the other hand, the clearly defined dust between the core and the outer ring, which forms the "spokes" that inspire the galaxy's name, is mostly silicate dust. The smaller spiral galaxy to the upper left of Cartwheel displays much of the same behaviour, showing a large amount of star formation.? MIRI was contributed by ESA and NASA, with the instrument designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (the MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the University of Arizona.
On GPS: Space as you've never seen it before
07:01 - Source: CNN

Jupiter is hard to translate into images because of how quickly it rotates, said Schmidt, who’s based in Modesto, California.

“This one image sums up the science of our Jupiter system program, which studies the dynamics and chemistry of Jupiter itself, its rings, and its satellite system,” Fouchet said.

But Jupiter isn’t Webb’s only subject. The space telescope is using infrared light to reveal otherwise invisible aspects of the universe.

- Source: CNN " data-fave-thumbnails="{"big": { "uri": "https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220712092620-04-james-webb-telescope-first-images-0712-carina-nebula.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill" }, "small": { "uri": "https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/220712092620-04-james-webb-telescope-first-images-0712-carina-nebula.jpg?c=16x9&q=h_540,w_960,c_fill" } }" data-vr-video="false" data-show-html=" Connect the World " data-byline-html="
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This landscape of "mountains" and "valleys" speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.
'I'm a little verklempt': Analyst breaks down stunning new Webb telescope images
03:50 - Source: CNN

Development of the world’s premier space observatory began in 2004, and after years of delays, the telescope and its massive gold mirror finally launched on December 25, 2021.

The telescope will look at every phase of cosmic history, including the first glows after the big bang that created our universe and the formation of the galaxies, stars and planets that fill it today.

The telescope is also discovering and observing exoplanetary systems, which each consist of a planet outside of our solar system and its host star.

Some of these exoplanets are potentially habitable, and peering into their atmosphere could uncover clues in the ongoing search for life outside of Earth.

CNN’s Ashley Strickland and Megan Marples contributed to this report.