NASA’s Webb Space Telescope captures bright auroras on Jupiter
Jupiter’s dazzling auroras are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth, new images from the James Webb Space Telescope reveal.
The solar system’s largest planet displays striking dancing lights when high-energy particles from space collide with atoms of gas in the atmosphere near its magnetic poles.
Jupiter’s auroras and Earth’s Northern and Southern lights are all powered by high energy particles ejected from the sun during solar storms. But Jupiter’s lights are turned up even higher because the strong magnetic field of the planet also captures particles thrown into space from massive volcanoes on its moon Io.
Webb previously captured Neptune’s glowing auroras in the best detail yet, many decades after they were first faintly detected during a flyby of the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
The Webb telescope captured the fast-varying auroral features using a unique near-infrared camera.
The study of the planet was made on Dec. 25, 2023, by a team of scientists led by Jonathan Nichols from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. The results of their study were published today in the journal Nature Communications.
