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Explore This Section Overview Science Science Findings Juno’s Orbits Spacecraft People Stories Multimedia JunoCam Images Jupiter hosts the brightest and most spectacular auroras in the Solar System. Near its poles, these shimmering lights offer a glimpse into how the planet interacts with the solar wind and moons swept by Jupiter’s magnetic field. Unlike Earth’s northern lights, the largest moons of Jupiter create their own auroral signatures in the planet’s atmosphere — a phenomenon that Earth’s Moon does not produce. These moon-induced auroras, known as “satellite footprints,” reveal how each moon interacts with its local space environment.
Juno capturing the marks on Jupiter of all four Galilean moons. The auroras related to each are labeled Io, Eur (for Europa), Gan (for Ganymede), and Cal (for Callisto). NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/UVS team/MSSS/Gill/Jónsson/Perry/Hue/Rabia Before NASA’s Juno mission, three of Jupiter’s four largest moons, known as Galilean moons — Io, Europa, and Ganymede — were shown to produce these distinct auroral signatures. But Callisto, the most distant of the Galilean moons, remained a mystery. Despite multiple attempts using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, Callisto’s footprint had proven elusive, both because it is faint and because it most often lies atop the brighter main auroral oval, the region where auroras are displayed.
NASA’s Juno mission, orbiting Jupiter since 2016, offers unprecedented close-up views of these polar light shows. But to image Callisto’s footprint, the main auroral oval needs to move aside while the polar region is being imaged. And to bring to bear Juno’s arsenal of instruments studying fields and particles, the spacecraft’s trajectory must carry it across the magnetic field line linking Callisto and Jupiter.
These two events serendipitously occurred during Juno’s 22nd orbit of the giant planet, in September 2019, revealing Callisto’s auroral footprint and providing a sample of the particle population, electromagnetic waves, and magnetic fields associated with the interaction.
Jupiter’s magnetic field extends far beyond its major moons, carving out a vast region (magnetosphere) enveloped by, and buffeted by, the solar wind streaming from our Sun. Just as solar storms on Earth push the northern lights to more southern latitudes, Jupiter’s auroras are also affected by our Sun’s activity. In September 2019, a massive, high-density solar stream buffeted Jupiter’s magnetosphere, briefly revealing — as the auroral oval moved toward Jupiter’s equator — a faint but distinct signature associated with Callisto. This discovery finally confirms that all four Galilean moons leave their mark on Jupiter’s atmosphere, and that Callisto’s footprints are sustained much like those of its siblings, completing the family portrait of the Galilean moon auroral signatures.
An international team of scientists led by Jonas Rabia of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP), CNRS, CNES, in Toulouse, France, published their paper on the discovery, “In situ and remote observations of the ultraviolet footprint of the moon Callisto by the Juno spacecraft,” in the journal Nature Communications on Sept. 1, 2025.
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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
Scientists believe giant impacts — like the one depicted in this artist’s concept — occurred on Mars 4.5 billion years ago, injecting debris from the impact deep into the planet’s mantle. NASA’s InSight lander detected this debris before the mission’s end in 2022.NASA/JPL-Caltech Rocky material that impacted Mars lies scattered in giant lumps throughout the planet’s mantle, offering clues about Mars’ interior and its ancient past.
What appear to be fragments from the aftermath of massive impacts on Mars that occurred 4.5 billion years ago have been detected deep below the planet’s surface. The discovery was made thanks to NASA’s now-retired InSight lander, which recorded the findings before the mission’s end in 2022. The ancient impacts released enough energy to melt continent-size swaths of the early crust and mantle into vast magma oceans, simultaneously injecting the impactor fragments and Martian debris deep into the planet’s interior.
There’s no way to tell exactly what struck Mars: The early solar system was filled with a range of different rocky objects that could have done so, including some so large they were effectively protoplanets. The remains of these impacts still exist in the form of lumps that are as large as 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) across and scattered throughout the Martian mantle. They offer a record preserved only on worlds like Mars, whose lack of tectonic plates has kept its interior from being churned up the way Earth’s is through a process known as convection.
A cutaway view of Mars in this artist’s concept (not to scale) reveals debris from ancient impacts scattered through the planet’s mantle. On the surface at left, a meteoroid impact sends seismic signals through the interior; at right is NASA’s InSight lander.NASA/JPL-Caltech The finding was reported Thursday, Aug. 28, in a study published by the journal Science.
“We’ve never seen the inside of a planet in such fine detail and clarity before,” said the paper’s lead author, Constantinos Charalambous of Imperial College London. “What we’re seeing is a mantle studded with ancient fragments. Their survival to this day tells us Mars’ mantle has evolved sluggishly over billions of years. On Earth, features like these may well have been largely erased.”
InSight, which was managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, placed the first seismometer on Mars’ surface in 2018. The extremely sensitive instrument recorded 1,319 marsquakes before the lander’s end of mission in 2022.
NASA’s InSight took this selfie in 2019 using a camera on its robotic arm. The lander also used its arm to deploy the mission’s seismometer, whose data was used in a 2025 study showing impacts left chunks of debris deep in the planet’s interior.NASA/JPL-Caltech Quakes produce seismic waves that change as they pass through different kinds of material, providing scientists a way to study the interior of a planetary body. To date, the InSight team has measured the size, depth, and composition of Mars’ crust, mantle, and core. This latest discovery regarding the mantle’s composition suggests how much is still waiting to be discovered within InSight’s data.
“We knew Mars was a time capsule bearing records of its early formation, but we didn’t anticipate just how clearly we’d be able to see with InSight,” said Tom Pike of Imperial College London, coauthor of the paper.
Quake hunting
Mars lacks the tectonic plates that produce the temblors many people in seismically active areas are familiar with. But there are two other types of quakes on Earth that also occur on Mars: those caused by rocks cracking under heat and pressure, and those caused by meteoroid impacts.
Of the two types, meteoroid impacts on Mars produce high-frequency seismic waves that travel from the crust deep into the planet’s mantle, according to a paper published earlier this year in Geophysical Research Letters. Located beneath the planet’s crust, the Martian mantle can be as much as 960 miles (1,550 kilometers) thick and is made of solid rock that can reach temperatures as high as 2,732 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius).
Scrambled signals
The new Science paper identifies eight marsquakes whose seismic waves contained strong, high-frequency energy that reached deep into the mantle, where their seismic waves were distinctly altered.
“When we first saw this in our quake data, we thought the slowdowns were happening in the Martian crust,” Pike said. “But then we noticed that the farther seismic waves travel through the mantle, the more these high-frequency signals were being delayed.”
Using planetwide computer simulations, the team saw that the slowing down and scrambling happened only when the signals passed through small, localized regions within the mantle. They also determined that these regions appear to be lumps of material with a different composition than the surrounding mantle.
With one riddle solved, the team focused on another: how those lumps got there.
Turning back the clock, they concluded that the lumps likely arrived as giant asteroids or other rocky material that struck Mars during the early solar system, generating those oceans of magma as they drove deep into the mantle, bringing with them fragments of crust and mantle.
Charalambous likens the pattern to shattered glass — a few large shards with many smaller fragments. The pattern is consistent with a large release of energy that scattered many fragments of material throughout the mantle. It also fits well with current thinking that in the early solar system, asteroids and other planetary bodies regularly bombarded the young planets.
On Earth, the crust and uppermost mantle is continuously recycled by plate tectonics pushing a plate’s edge into the hot interior, where, through convection, hotter, less-dense material rises and cooler, denser material sinks. Mars, by contrast, lacks tectonic plates, and its interior circulates far more sluggishly. The fact that such fine structures are still visible today, Charalambous said, “tells us Mars hasn’t undergone the vigorous churning that would have smoothed out these lumps.”
And in that way, Mars could point to what may be lurking beneath the surface of other rocky planets that lack plate tectonics, including Venus and Mercury.
More about InSight
JPL managed InSight for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. InSight was part of NASA’s Discovery Program, managed by the agency’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built the InSight spacecraft, including its cruise stage and lander, and supported spacecraft operations for the mission.
A number of European partners, including France’s Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), supported the InSight mission. CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) instrument to NASA, with the principal investigator at IPGP (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris). Significant contributions for SEIS came from IPGP; the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany; the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in Switzerland; Imperial College London and Oxford University in the United Kingdom; and JPL. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3) instrument, with significant contributions from the Space Research Center (CBK) of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Astronika in Poland. Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología (CAB) supplied the temperature and wind sensors.
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Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have found strong evidence of a giant planet orbiting a star in the stellar system closest to our own Sun. At just 4 light-years away from Earth, the Alpha Centauri triple star system has long been a compelling target in the search for worlds beyond our solar system.
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This artist’s concept shows what a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A could look like. Observations of the triple star system Alpha Centauri using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope indicate the potential gas giant, about the mass of Saturn, orbiting the star by about two times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Full illustration and caption shown below. Credits:
Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC) Astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found strong evidence of a giant planet orbiting a star in the stellar system closest to our own Sun. At just 4 light-years away from Earth, the Alpha Centauri triple star system has long been a compelling target in the search for worlds beyond our solar system.
Visible only from Earth’s Southern hemisphere, it’s made up of the binary Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, both Sun-like stars, and the faint red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A is the third brightest star in the night sky. While there are three confirmed planets orbiting Proxima Centauri, the presence of other worlds surrounding Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B has proved challenging to confirm.
Now, Webb’s observations from its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are providing the strongest evidence to date of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. The results have been accepted in a series of two papers in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
If confirmed, the planet would be the closest to Earth that orbits in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star. However, because the planet candidate is a gas giant, scientists say it would not support life as we know it.
“With this system being so close to us, any exoplanets found would offer our best opportunity to collect data on planetary systems other than our own. Yet, these are incredibly challenging observations to make, even with the world’s most powerful space telescope, because these stars are so bright, close, and move across the sky quickly,” said Charles Beichman, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech’s IPAC astronomy center, co-first author on the new papers. “Webb was designed and optimized to find the most distant galaxies in the universe. The operations team at the Space Telescope Science Institute had to come up with a custom observing sequence just for this target, and their extra effort paid off spectacularly.”
Image A: Alpha Centauri 3 Panel (DSS, Hubble, Webb)
This image shows the Alpha Centauri star system from several different ground- and space-based observatories: the Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, and NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Alpha Centauri A is the third brightest star in the night sky, and the closest Sun-like star to Earth. The ground-based image from DSS shows the triple system as a single source of light, while Hubble resolves the two Sun-like stars in the system, Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B. The image from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), which uses a coronagraphic mask to block the bright glare from Alpha Centauri A, reveals a potential planet orbiting the star. Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, DSS, A. Sanghi (Caltech), C. Beichman (NExScI, NASA/JPL-Caltech), D. Mawet (Caltech); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) Several rounds of meticulously planned observations by Webb, careful analysis by the research team, and extensive computer modeling helped determine that the source seen in Webb’s image is likely to be a planet, and not a background object (like a galaxy), foreground object (a passing asteroid), or other detector or image artifact.
The first observations of the system took place in August 2024, using the coronagraphic mask aboard MIRI to block Alpha Centauri A’s light. While extra brightness from the nearby companion star Alpha Centauri B complicated the analysis, the team was able to subtract out the light from both stars to reveal an object over 10,000 times fainter than Alpha Centauri A, separated from the star by about two times the distance between the Sun and Earth.
Image B: Alpha Centauri 3 Panel (Webb MIRI Image Detail)
This three-panel image captures NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s observational search for a planet around the nearest Sun-like star, Alpha Centauri A. The initial image shows the bright glare of Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, and the middle panel then shows the system with a coronagraphic mask placed over Alpha Centauri A to block its bright glare. However, the way the light bends around the edges of the coronagraph creates ripples of light in the surrounding space. The telescope’s optics (its mirrors and support structures) cause some light to interfere with itself, producing circular and spoke-like patterns. These complex light patterns, along with light from the nearby Alpha Centauri B, make it incredibly difficult to spot faint planets. In the panel at the right, astronomers have subtracted the known patterns (using reference images and algorithms) to clean up the image and reveal faint sources like the candidate planet. Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Sanghi (Caltech), C. Beichman (NExScI, NASA/JPL-Caltech), D. Mawet (Caltech); Image Processing: J. DePasquale (STScI) While the initial detection was exciting, the research team needed more data to come to a firm conclusion. However, additional observations of the system in February 2025 and April 2025 (using Director’s Discretionary Time) did not reveal any objects like the one identified in August 2024.
“We are faced with the case of a disappearing planet! To investigate this mystery, we used computer models to simulate millions of potential orbits, incorporating the knowledge gained when we saw the planet, as well as when we did not,” said PhD student Aniket Sanghi of Caltech in Pasadena, California. Sanghi is a co-first author on the two papers covering the team’s research.
In these simulations, the team took into account both a 2019 sighting of the potential exoplanet candidate by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the new data from Webb, and considered orbits that would be gravitationally stable in the presence of Alpha Centauri B, meaning the planet wouldn’t get flung out of the system.
Researchers say a non-detection in the second and third round of observations with Webb isn’t surprising.
“We found that in half of the possible orbits simulated, the planet moved too close to the star and wouldn’t have been visible to Webb in both February and April 2025,” said Sanghi.
Image C: Alpha Centauri A Planet Candidate (Artist’s Concept)
This artist’s concept shows what a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A could look like. Observations of the triple star system Alpha Centauri using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope indicate the potential gas giant, about the mass of Saturn, orbiting the star by about two times the distance between the Sun and Earth. In this concept, Alpha Centauri A is depicted at the upper left of the planet, while the other Sun-like star in the system, Alpha Centauri B, is at the upper right. Our Sun is shown as a small dot of light between those two stars. Artwork: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, R. Hurt (Caltech/IPAC) Based on the brightness of the planet in the mid-infrared observations and the orbit simulations, researchers say it could be a gas giant approximately the mass of Saturn orbiting Alpha Centauri A in an elliptical path varying between 1 to 2 times the distance between Sun and Earth.
“If confirmed, the potential planet seen in the Webb image of Alpha Centauri A would mark a new milestone for exoplanet imaging efforts,” Sanghi says. “Of all the directly imaged planets, this would be the closest to its star seen so far. It’s also the most similar in temperature and age to the giant planets in our solar system, and nearest to our home, Earth,” he says. “Its very existence in a system of two closely separated stars would challenge our understanding of how planets form, survive, and evolve in chaotic environments.”
If confirmed by additional observations, the team’s results could transform the future of exoplanet science.
“This would become a touchstone object for exoplanet science, with multiple opportunities for detailed characterization by Webb and other observatories,” said Beichman.
For example, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch by May 2027 and potentially as early as fall 2026, is equipped with dedicated hardware that will test new technologies to observe binary systems like Alpha Centauri in search of other worlds. Roman’s visible light data would complement Webb’s infrared observations, yielding unique insights on the size and reflectivity of the planet.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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Explore Hubble Science Hubble Space Telescope As NASA Missions Study… Hubble Home Overview About Hubble The History of Hubble Hubble Timeline Why Have a Telescope in Space? Hubble by the Numbers At the Museum FAQs Impact & Benefits Hubble’s Impact & Benefits Science Impacts Cultural Impact Technology Benefits Impact on Human Spaceflight Astro Community Impacts Science Hubble Science Science Themes Science Highlights Science Behind Discoveries Hubble’s Partners in Science Universe Uncovered AI and Hubble Science Explore the Night Sky Observatory Hubble Observatory Hubble Design Mission Operations Missions to Hubble Hubble vs Webb Team Hubble Team Career Aspirations Hubble Astronauts Multimedia Images Videos Sonifications Podcasts e-Books Online Activities 3D Hubble Models Lithographs Fact Sheets Posters Hubble on the NASA App Glossary News Hubble News Social Media Media Resources More 35th Anniversary Online Activities 4 min read
As NASA Missions Study Interstellar Comet, Hubble Makes Size Estimate
Hubble captured this image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus. Image: NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI) A team of astronomers has taken the sharpest-ever picture of the unexpected interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS using the crisp vision of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble is one of many missions across NASA’s fleet of space telescopes slated to observe this comet, together providing more information about its size and physical properties. While the comet poses no threat to Earth, NASA’s space telescopes help support the agency’s ongoing mission to find, track, and better understand near-Earth objects.
Hubble’s observations allow astronomers to more accurately estimate the size of the comet’s solid, icy nucleus. The upper limit on the diameter of the nucleus is 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers), though it could be as small as 1,000 feet (320 meters) across, researchers report. Though the Hubble images put tighter constraints on the size of the nucleus compared to previous ground-based estimates, the solid heart of the comet presently cannot be directly seen, even by Hubble. Observations from other NASA missions including the James Webb Space Telescope, TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, as well as NASA’s partnership with the W.M. Keck Observatory, will help further refine our knowledge about the comet, including its chemical makeup.
Hubble also captured a dust plume ejected from the Sun-warmed side of the comet, and the hint of a dust tail streaming away from the nucleus. Hubble’s data yields a dust-loss rate consistent with comets that are first detected around 300 million miles from the Sun. This behavior is much like the signature of previously seen Sun-bound comets originating within our solar system.
The big difference is that this interstellar visitor originated in some other solar system elsewhere in our Milky Way galaxy.
3I/ATLAS is traveling through our solar system at a staggering 130,000 miles (209,000 kilometers) per hour, the highest velocity ever recorded for a solar system visitor. This breathtaking sprint is evidence that the comet has been drifting through interstellar space for many billions of years. The gravitational slingshot effect from innumerable stars and nebulae the comet passed added momentum, ratcheting up its speed. The longer 3I/ATLAS was out in space, the higher its speed grew.
“No one knows where the comet came from. It’s like glimpsing a rifle bullet for a thousandth of a second. You can’t project that back with any accuracy to figure out where it started on its path,” said David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles, science team leader for the Hubble observations.
The paper will be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. It is already available on Astro-ph.
New Evidence for Population of Wandering Space Relics
“This latest interstellar tourist is one of a previously undetected population of objects bursting onto the scene that will gradually emerge,” said Jewitt. “This is now possible because we have powerful sky survey capabilities that we didn’t have before. We’ve crossed a threshold.”
This comet was discovered by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) on July 1, 2025, at a distance of 420 million miles from the Sun. ATLAS is an asteroid impact early warning system developed by the University of Hawai’i.
In the meantime, other NASA missions will provide new insight into this third interstellar interloper, helping refine our understanding of these objects for the benefit of all. 3I/ATLAS should remain visible to ground-based telescopes through September, after which it will pass too close to the Sun to observe, and is expected to reappear on the other side of the Sun by early December.
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
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Hubble captured this image of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS on July 21, 2025, when the comet was 277 million miles from Earth. Hubble shows that the comet has a teardrop-shaped cocoon of dust coming off its solid, icy nucleus.
Comet 3I/ATLAS Compass Image
This image of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera on July 21, 2025. The scale bar is labeled in arcseconds, which is a measure of angular distance on the sky. One arcsecond is equal an angular measurement of 1/3600 of o…
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