NASA, the American aerospace agency, published on Monday 19, the first images of Mars captured by the James Webb telescope, developed in collaboration with the European (ESA) and Canadian (CSA) space agencies. The material was collected on the last day 5 by an infrared camera.

NASA said that with the new images, the telescope provides a “unique perspective of the neighboring planet”, supplementing data already collected by orbiters, rovers and other telescopes.

According to the aerospace agency, the first images of Mars captured by James Webb, more precisely by the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) – an infrared camera -, show a region of the eastern hemisphere of the planet in two wavelengths different, or colors of light. .infrared.

“The close-up on the left reveals surface features such as the Huygens crater, the dark Syrtis Major volcano and the Hellas Basin, while the ‘heat map’ on the right shows the light emitted by Mars as it loses heat. heat,” NASA reported. .

According to NASA, because it is so close, Mars – which is more than 54 million kilometers from Earth – is one of the brightest objects in the night sky in terms of visible light (which human eyes can see). This poses particular challenges for the observatory, which was built to detect extremely faint light from the most distant galaxies in the universe.

“Webb’s instruments are so sensitive that, without special observing techniques, Mars’ bright infrared light is blinding, causing a phenomenon known as ‘detector saturation,'” the space agency said.

“Astronomers adjusted for Mars’ extreme brightness by using very short exposures, measuring only part of the light that hit the detectors, and applying special data analysis techniques,” he said. added.

The material was collected by the telescope on September 5. In another image, also released on Monday, it is possible to locate the points depicted by James Webb in a projection of the map of Mars.