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Explore Webb Webb News Latest News Latest Images Webb’s Blog Awards X (offsite – login reqd) Instagram (offsite – login reqd) Facebook (offsite- login reqd) Youtube (offsite) Overview About Who is James Webb? Fact Sheet Impacts+Benefits FAQ Science Overview and Goals Early Universe Galaxies Over Time Star Lifecycle Other Worlds Observatory Overview Launch Deployment Orbit Mirrors Sunshield Instrument: NIRCam Instrument: MIRI Instrument: NIRSpec Instrument: FGS/NIRISS Optical Telescope Element Backplane Spacecraft Bus Instrument Module Multimedia About Webb Images Images Videos What is Webb Observing? 3d Webb in 3d Solar System Podcasts Webb Image Sonifications Team International Team People Of Webb More For the Media For Scientists For Educators For Fun/Learning 5 Min Read NASA’s Webb Reveals New Details, Mysteries in Jupiter’s Aurora
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of the auroras on our solar system’s largest planet. The dancing lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth. Full image below. Credits:
NASA, ESA, CSA, Jonathan Nichols (University of Leicester), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb) NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of the auroras on our solar system’s largest planet. The dancing lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth. With Webb’s advanced sensitivity, astronomers have studied the phenomena to better understand Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
Auroras are created when high-energy particles enter a planet’s atmosphere near its magnetic poles and collide with atoms or molecules of gas. On Earth these are known as the Northern and Southern Lights. Not only are the auroras on Jupiter huge in size, they are also hundreds of times more energetic than those in Earth’s atmosphere. Earth’s auroras are caused by solar storms — when charged particles from the Sun rain down on the upper atmosphere, energize gases, and cause them to glow in shades of red, green and purple.
Image A: Close-up Observations of Auroras on Jupiter
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of the auroras on our solar system’s largest planet. The dancing lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth.
These observations of Jupiter’s auroras, taken at a wavelength of 3.36 microns (F335M) were captured with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on Dec. 25, 2023. Scientists found that the emission from trihydrogen cation, known as H3+, is far more variable than previously believed. H3+ is created by the impact of high energy electrons on molecular hydrogen. Because this emission shines brightly in the infrared, Webb’s instruments are well equipped to observe it. NASA, ESA, CSA, Jonathan Nichols (University of Leicester), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb) Jupiter has an additional source for its auroras: The strong magnetic field of the gas giant grabs charged particles from its surroundings. This includes not only the charged particles within the solar wind but also the particles thrown into space by its orbiting moon Io, known for its numerous and large volcanoes. Io’s volcanoes spew particles that escape the moon’s gravity and orbit Jupiter. A barrage of charged particles unleashed by the Sun also reaches the planet. Jupiter’s large and powerful magnetic field captures all of the charged particles and accelerates them to tremendous speeds. These speedy particles slam into the planet’s atmosphere at high energies, which excites the gas and causes it to glow.
Image B: Pullout of Aurora Observations on Jupiter (NIRCam Image)
These observations of Jupiter’s auroras (shown on the left of the above image) at 3.35 microns (F335M) were captured with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on Dec. 25, 2023. Scientists found that the emission from trihydrogen cation, known as H3+, is far more variable than previously believed. H3+ is created by the impact of high energy electrons on molecular hydrogen. Because this emission shines brightly in the infrared, Webb’s instruments are well equipped to observe it. The image on the right shows the planet Jupiter to indicate the location of the observed auroras, which was originally published in 2023. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ricardo Hueso (UPV), Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley), Thierry Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), Leigh Fletcher (University of Leicester), Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Jonathan Nichols (University of Leicester), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb) Now, Webb’s unique capabilities are providing new insights into the auroras on Jupiter. The telescope’s sensitivity allows astronomers to capture fast-varying auroral features. New data was captured with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) Dec. 25, 2023, by a team of scientists led by Jonathan Nichols from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom.
“What a Christmas present it was – it just blew me away!” shared Nichols. “We wanted to see how quickly the auroras change, expecting them 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.”
In particular, the team studied emission from the trihydrogen cation (H3+), which can be created in auroras. They found that this emission is far more variable than previously believed. The observations will help develop scientists’ understanding of how Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is heated and cooled.
The team also uncovered some unexplained observations in their data.
“What made these observations even more special is that we also took pictures simultaneously in the ultraviolet with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope,” added Nichols. “Bizarrely, the brightest light observed by Webb had no real counterpart in Hubble’s pictures. This has left us scratching our heads. In order to cause the combination of brightness seen by both Webb and Hubble, we need to have a combination of high quantities of very low-energy particles hitting the atmosphere, which was previously thought to be impossible. We still don’t understand how this happens.”
Video: Webb Captures Jupiter’s Aurora
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a spectacular light show on Jupiter — an enormous display of auroras unlike anything seen on Earth. These infrared observations reveal unexpected activity in Jupiter’s atmosphere, challenging what scientists thought they knew about the planet’s magnetic field and particle interactions. Combined with ultraviolet data from Hubble, the results have raised surprising new questions about Jupiter’s extreme environment.
Producer: Paul Morris. Writer: Thaddeus Cesari. Narrator: Professor Jonathan Nichols. Images: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI. Music Credit: “Zero Gravity” by Brice Davoli [SACEM] via Koka Media [SACEM], Universal Production Music France [SACEM], and Universal Production Music. The team now plans to study this discrepancy between the Hubble and Webb data and to explore the wider implications for Jupiter’s atmosphere and space environment. They also intend to follow up this research with more Webb observations, which they can compare with data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft to better explore the cause of the enigmatic bright emission.
These results were published today in the journal Nature Communications.
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).
To learn more about Webb, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/webb
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Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
Bethany Downer – Bethany.Downer@esawebb.org
ESA/Webb, Baltimore, Md.
Christine Pulliam – cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.
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Last Updated May 12, 2025 Editor Marty McCoy Contact Laura Betz laura.e.betz@nasa.gov Related Terms
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By European Space Agency
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of the auroras on our Solar System’s largest planet. The dancing lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth. With Webb’s advanced sensitivity, astronomers have studied the phenomena to better understand Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
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By NASA
Did you know some of the brightest sources of light in the sky come from the regions around black holes in the centers of galaxies? It sounds a little contradictory, but it’s true! They may not look bright to our eyes, but satellites have spotted oodles of them across the universe.
One of those satellites is NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Fermi has found thousands of these kinds of galaxies since it launched in 2008, and there are many more out there!
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Watch a cosmic gamma-ray fireworks show in this animation using just a year of data from the Large Area Telescope (LAT) aboard NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Each object’s magenta circle grows as it brightens and shrinks as it dims. The yellow circle represents the Sun following its apparent annual path across the sky. The animation shows a subset of the LAT gamma-ray records available for more than 1,500 objects in a continually updated repository. Over 90% of these sources are a type of galaxy called a blazar, powered by the activity of a supermassive black hole. NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center/Daniel Kocevski Black holes are regions of space that have so much gravity that nothing — not light, not particles, nada — can escape. Most galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers, and these black holes are hundreds of thousands to billions of times the mass of our Sun. In active galactic nuclei (also called “AGN” for short, or just “active galaxies”) the central region is stuffed with gas and dust that’s constantly falling toward the black hole. As the gas and dust fall, they start to spin and form a disk. Because of the friction and other forces at work, the spinning disk starts to heat up.
This composite view of the active galaxy Markarian 573 combines X-ray data (blue) from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and radio observations (purple) from the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico with a visible light image (gold) from the Hubble Space Telescope. Markarian 573 is an active galaxy that has two cones of emission streaming away from the supermassive black hole at its center. X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/A.Paggi et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA The disk’s heat gets emitted as light, but not just wavelengths of it that we can see with our eyes. We detect light from AGN across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from the more familiar radio and optical waves through to the more exotic X-rays and gamma rays, which we need special telescopes to spot.
In the heart of an active galaxy, matter falling toward a supermassive black hole creates jets of particles traveling near the speed of light as shown in this artist’s concept. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab About one in 10 AGN beam out jets of energetic particles, which are traveling almost as fast as light. Scientists are studying these jets to try to understand how black holes — which pull everything in with their huge amounts of gravity — somehow provide the energy needed to propel the particles in these jets.
This artist’s concept shows two views of the active galaxy TXS 0128+554, located around 500 million light-years away. Left: The galaxy’s central jets appear as they would if we viewed them both at the same angle. The black hole, embedded in a disk of dust and gas, launches a pair of particle jets traveling at nearly the speed of light. Scientists think gamma rays (magenta) detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope originate from the base of these jets. As the jets collide with material surrounding the galaxy, they form identical lobes seen at radio wavelengths (orange). The jets experienced two distinct bouts of activity, which created the gap between the lobes and the black hole. Right: The galaxy appears in its actual orientation, with its jets tipped out of our line of sight by about 50 degrees. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Many of the ways we tell one type of AGN from another depend on how they’re oriented from our point of view. With radio galaxies, for example, we see the jets from the side as they’re beaming vast amounts of energy into space. Then there’s blazars, which are a type of AGN that have a jet that is pointed almost directly at Earth, which makes the AGN particularly bright.
Blazar 3C 279’s historic gamma-ray flare in 2015 can be seen in this image from the Large Area Telescope on NASA’s Fermi satellite. During the flare, the blazar outshone the Vela pulsar, usually the brightest object in the gamma-ray sky. NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration Fermi has been searching the sky for gamma ray sources since 2008. More than half of the sources it has found have been blazars. Gamma rays are useful because they can tell us a lot about how particles accelerate and how they interact with their environment.
So why do we care about AGN? We know that some AGN formed early in the history of the universe. With their enormous power, they almost certainly affected how the universe changed over time. By discovering how AGN work, we can understand better how the universe came to be the way it is now.
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Last Updated Apr 30, 2025 Related Terms
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How can I see the northern lights?
To see the northern lights, you need to be in the right place at the right time.
Auroras are the result of charged particles and magnetism from the Sun called space weather dancing with the Earth’s magnetic field. And they happen far above the clouds. So you need clear skies, good space weather at your latitude and the higher, more polar you can be, the better. You need a lot of patience and some luck is always helpful.
A smartphone can also really help confirm whether you saw a little bit of kind of dim aurora, because cameras are more sensitive than our eyes.
The best months to see aurorae, statistically, are March and September. The best times to be looking are around midnight, but sometimes when the Sun is super active, it can happen any time from sunset to sunrise.
You can also increase your chances by learning more about space weather data and a great place to do that is at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.
You can also check out my project, Aurorasaurus.org, where we have free alerts that are based on your location and we offer information about how to interpret the data. And you can also report and tell us if you were able to see aurora or not and that helps others.
One last tip is finding a safe, dark sky viewing location with a great view of the northern horizon that’s near you.
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Last Updated Mar 26, 2025 Related Terms
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