JWST Captures Jupiter's Auroras 'Fizzing And Popping With Light'
14 May 2025
By Michelle Starr
JWST Captures Jupiter's Auroras 'Fizzing And Popping With Light'
JWST captured infrared emission from Jupiter's powerful, permanent auroras. (ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, J. Nichols/University of Leicester, M. Zamani/ESA/Webb)
It's only fitting that Jupiter, nicknamed the king of the planets, wears a crown – and what a crown it is.
Although we can't see them with our naked eyes, the giant planet sports the most powerful auroras in the Solar System – permanent shimmering caps at its north and south poles, gleaming in non-visible wavelengths – ultraviolet, infrared, and occasional bursts of X-ray.
In recent years, observations with the most cutting-edge instruments have finally started to reveal the secrets of these giant, invisible auroras, but there's still a lot we have to learn. The world's most powerful space telescope has taken us a little bit further: new observations from JWST, obtained on 25 December 2023, reveal features astronomers have never seen before.
"What a Christmas present it was – it just blew me away!" says astronomer Jonathan Nichols of the University of Leicester in the UK.
"We wanted to see how quickly the auroras change, expecting it to fade in and out ponderously, perhaps over a quarter of an hour or so. Instead we observed the whole auroral region fizzing and popping with light, sometimes varying by the second."
More:
https://www.sciencealert.com/jwst-captures-jupiters-auroras-fizzing-and-popping-with-light