NASA, Musk Share Laughs On Webb's New Uranus Image

NASA on Thursday shared an image of the planet Uranus captured by its James Webb Space Telescope, drawing appreciation from Elon Musk.

What Happened: NASA shared an image of Uranus captured by its James Webb telescope on Twitter with a cheeky message, “Go ahead, get it out of your system. We tried.” SpaceX CEO and billionaire Elon Musk replied to the joke with “Good one.”

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Only Voyager 2 spacecraft and Keck with adaptive optics imaged the planet’s faintest rings before, NASA noted. Voyager 2 captured Uranus as it flew past the planet in 1986. The camera then showed a blue-green ball. NASA’s image, however, shows 11 of the planet’s 13 rings.

Webb also captured a few of Uranus' 27 known moons. While most are too small and faint, the six brightest were identified in the image.

“It is just the tip of the iceberg of what Webb can do when observing this mysterious planet,” NASA said in a statement.  

Musk had expressed excitement at the potential of the James Webb telescope back in July 2022 when NASA shared the first full-color images captured by the infrared space telescope.

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Photo: Courtesy NASA