12/05/2025
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The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb House Telescope has captured new particulars of the auroras on our Photo voltaic System’s largest planet. The dancing lights noticed on Jupiter are a whole bunch of occasions brighter than these seen on Earth. With Webb’s superior sensitivity, astronomers have studied the phenomena to higher perceive Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
The auroras are created when high-energy particles enter a planet’s environment close to its magnetic poles and collide with atoms of gasoline. Not solely are the auroras on Jupiter big in measurement, they’re additionally a whole bunch of occasions extra energetic than auroras on Earth. Right here, auroras are attributable to photo voltaic storms – when charged particles rain down on the higher environment, excite gases and trigger them to glow colors of pink, inexperienced and purple. In the meantime, Jupiter has an extra supply for its auroras; the robust magnetic area of the gasoline big grabs charged particles from its environment. This consists of not solely the charged particles throughout the photo voltaic wind but in addition the particles thrown into area by its orbiting moon Io, recognized for its quite a few and huge volcanoes. Io’s volcanoes spew particles that, remarkably, escape the moon’s gravity and orbit Jupiter. A barrage of charged particles unleashed by the solar throughout photo voltaic storms additionally reaches the planet. Jupiter’s massive and highly effective magnetic area captures charged particles and accelerates them to super speeds. These speedy particles slam into the planet’s environment at excessive energies, which excites the gasoline and causes it to glow.
Now, Webb’s distinctive capabilities are offering new insights into the auroras on Jupiter. The telescope’s sensitivity permits astronomers to extend the shutter pace as a way to seize fast-varying auroral options. New information was captured with Webb’s Close to-InfraRed Digital camera (NIRCam) on Christmas Day 2023 by a staff of scientists led by Jonathan Nichols from the College of Leicester in the UK.
“What a Christmas current it was – it simply blew me away!” shared Jonathan. “We needed to see how shortly the auroras change, anticipating it to fade out and in ponderously, maybe over 1 / 4 of an hour or so. As a substitute we noticed the entire auroral area fizzing and popping with gentle, generally various by the second.”
The staff’s information discovered that the emission from the trihydrogen ion, often called H3+, is way extra variable than beforehand believed. The observations will assist develop scientists’ understanding of how Jupiter’s higher environment is heated and cooled.
The staff additionally uncovered some unexplained observations of their information.
“What made these observations much more particular is that we additionally took footage concurrently within the ultraviolet with the NASA/ESA Hubble House Telescope,” added Jonathan. “Bizarrely, the brightest gentle noticed by Webb had no actual counterpart in Hubble’s footage. This has left us scratching our heads. So as to trigger the mix of brightness seen by each Webb and Hubble, we have to have an apparently unimaginable mixture of excessive portions of very low vitality particles hitting the environment – like a tempest of drizzle! We nonetheless don’t perceive how this occurs.”
The staff now plans to check this discrepancy between the Hubble and Webb information and to discover the broader implications for Jupiter’s environment and area setting. Additionally they intend to observe up this analysis with extra Webb observations, which they’ll evaluate with information from NASA’s Juno spacecraft to higher discover the reason for the enigmatic shiny emission.
These insights may additionally assist the European House Company’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, which is en path to Jupiter to make detailed observations of the enormous gasoline planet and its three massive ocean-bearing moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. Juice will check out Jupiter’s auroras with seven distinctive scientific devices, together with two imagers. These close-up measurements will assist us perceive how the planet’s magnetic area and environment work together, in addition to the impact that charged particles from Io and the opposite moons have on Jupiter’s environment.
These outcomes have been obtained from information utilizing Webb’s Cycle 2 observing programme #4566 and Hubble’s observing programme #17471. The outcomes have been published today in Nature Communications.
Extra data
Webb is the most important, strongest telescope ever launched into area. Beneath a world collaboration settlement, ESA offered the telescope’s launch service, utilizing the Ariane 5 launch automobile. Working with companions, ESA was answerable for the event and qualification of Ariane 5 diversifications for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace. ESA additionally offered the workhorse spectrograph NIRSpec and 50% of the mid-infrared instrument MIRI, which was designed and constructed by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in partnership with JPL and the College of Arizona.
Webb is a world partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian House Company (CSA).
Contact:
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