Despite our inability to admire Neptune's fragile hoops from here, scientists caught a wonderful glimpse of them girding the azure realm in 1989 thanks to NASA's traveling probe Voyager -- and on Wednesday, the agency's equally exceptional James Webb Space Telescope presented us with round two. .

"It has been three decades since we last saw these faint, dusty rings, and this is the first time we've seen them in the infrared," Heidi Hammel, Neptune system expert and interdisciplinary scientist for the JWST, said in a statement.

It's unambiguous proof that the JWST is far too sensitive to capture what we might consider "blank space." This machine is powerful enough to serendipitously open a box of treasure every single time it gazes into the void. .

For comparison, here's what Voyager captured of Neptune's rings in 1989.

We aren't looking at the sort of visible wavelengths we're used to -- ones that show us color, like the kind the Hubble Space Telescope works with, for instance

Neptune still has its signature blue tint stemming from elements on the planet, such as methane gas, but the JWST can't show them to us

The Hubble Space Telescope shows Neptune in its blue glory while tracking two dark storms on the planet

"In fact, the methane gas is so strongly absorbing that the planet is quite dark at Webb wavelengths," the European Space Agency said in a press release, "Except where high-altitude clouds are present

The JWST captured seven of Neptune's moons. 

"Dominating this Webb portrait of Neptune is a very bright point of light sporting the signature diffraction spikes seen in many of Webb's images," ESA said