Inbox Astronomy: NASA's Webb Captures Neptune's Auroras For First Time

INBOX ASTRONOMY

NASA's Webb Captures Neptune's Auroras For First Time

Release date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025 6:00:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Long-sought auroral glow finally emerges under Webb’s powerful gaze.

Neptune lies in the frigid, dark, vast frontier of the outer edges of our solar system about 3 billion miles away from the Sun.

It’s only been visited once by a spacecraft back in 1989, and since then, observatories like NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have tracked the planet’s changing weather. Hubble even discovered a new moon orbiting the planet in 2013.

In many images, the planet appears as a blueish orb, sometimes with disappearing and reappearing dark spots. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has now revealed a different appearance—for the first time, a bright auroral glow from this ice giant.

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Find additional articles, images, and videos at WebbTelescope.org

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