Cape Canaveral: After decades, Neptune and its rings provide a colourful spectacle.

Neptune, the most distant frozen planet in the solar system, cannot be seen in telescopes. But on Wednesday, NASA released an image of Neptune taken by the James Webb Telescope.

Seven of the planet's 14 known moons can be seen in the image taken in July, along with a faint cloud of dust that has never been seen before.
Webb showed Jupiter at its best in a series of fresh photos released last month.

NASA's Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft to see Neptune in all its gaseous glory, during a 1989 flyby. No other spacecraft have visited the icy, blue planet. So it's been three decades since astronomers last saw these rings with such detail and clarity, said the Space Science Institute's Heidi Hammel, a planetary astronomer working with Webb.

Hamel tweeted that he cried when he saw the rings.

Webb is the world's largest and most powerful telescope, operating 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth.

Webb was sent to space last December. Most of its time is spent looking deeper into the universe.