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James Webb Space Telescope Shows Jupiter's Auroras, Tiny Moons

Marcia Dunn
Associated Press
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A wide field view showcases Jupiter in the upper right quadrant. The planet’s swirling horizontal stripes are rendered in blues, browns, and cream. Electric blue auroras glow above Jupiter’s north and south poles. A white glow emanates out from the auroras. Along the planet’s equator, rings glow in a faint white. These rings are one million times fainter than the planet itself! At the far left edge of the rings, a moon appears as a tiny white dot. Slightly further to the left, another moon glows with tiny white diffraction spikes. The rest of the image is the blackness of space, with faintly glowing white galaxies in the distance.
A wide-field view showcases Jupiter in the upper-right quadrant. The planet's swirling horizontal stripes are rendered in blues, browns and cream. Electric blue auroras glow above Jupiter's north and south poles. A white glow emanates out from the auroras. Along the planet's equator, rings glow in a faint white. These rings are 1 million times fainter than the planet itself. At the far-left edge of the rings, a moon appears as a tiny white dot. Slightly further to the left, another moon glows with tiny white diffraction spikes. The rest of the image is the blackness of space, with faintly glowing white galaxies in the distance. (NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Ricardo Hueso (UPV/EHU) and Judy Schmidt)

The world’s newest and biggest space telescope is showing Jupiter as never before, auroras and all.

Scientists released the shots Monday of the solar system’s biggest planet.

The James Webb Space Telescope took the photos in July, capturing unprecedented views of Jupiter’s northern and southern lights, and swirling polar haze. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm big enough to swallow Earth, stands out brightly alongside countless smaller storms.

One wide-field picture is particularly dramatic, showing the faint rings around the planet, as well as two tiny moons against a glittering background of galaxies.

“We’ve never seen Jupiter like this. It’s all quite incredible,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, of the University of California, Berkeley, who helped lead the observations.

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“We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest,” she added in a statement.

The infrared images were artificially colored in blue, white, green, yellow and orange, according to the U.S.-French research team, to make the features stand out.

Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter from three filters – F360M (red), F212N (yellow-green), and F150W2 (cyan) – and alignment due to the planet’s rotation.
Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter from three filters — F360M (red), F212N (yellow-green) and F150W2 (cyan) — and alignment due to the planet’s rotation. (ASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.)

NASA and the European Space Agency’s $10 billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope rocketed away at the end of last year and has been observing the cosmos in the infrared since summer. Scientists hope to behold the dawn of the universe with Webb, peering all the way back to when the first stars and galaxies were forming 13.7 billion years ago.

The observatory is positioned 1 million miles from Earth.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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