Scientists Celebrate As Webb Creates First-Ever 3D Map Of Auroras On Uranus

When it's not busy dissecting distant galaxies or creating dark matter maps, the James Webb Space Telescope is also making a name for itself closer to home. To wit, it has produced the first-ever three-dimensional images of upper atmosphere on Uranus, revealing a chaotic and shimmering world of infrared auroras.

By utilizing Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph, a global team of astronomers have successfully peered into Uranus' ignosphere, a region of the upper atmosphere loaded with charged particles. Unlike Earth’s auroras, which are primarily driven by solar winds, the auroras on Uranus are far more mysterious.

The new observations show that these light displays are not just fleeting flickers within the planet’s weather system. Webb's 3D mapping indicates that these auroral emissions are actually intertwined with the planet’s bizarre magnetic field, which is tilted 59 degrees away from its rotation axis and does not pass through ...