There’s something magical about stargazing during winter nights. For one team of scientists, the holiday season brought a surprise not from Earth—but from mighty Jupiter.
NASA has shared stunning visuals showing what happens when a solar storm hits Earth’s largest neighbour. The James Webb Space Telescope captured brilliant auroras on Jupiter, hundreds of times brighter than Earth’s northern lights.
These dazzling displays were detailed in a recent Nature Communications study. Jupiter’s magnetic field is unlike any other, snatching up charged particles from both the solar wind and from its own volcanic moon, Io. This cocktail of space energy fuels the planet’s fierce auroras.
A Celestial Show Unfolds
Using the James Webb telescope, scientists recorded fast-changing patterns in Jupiter’s auroral glow. These shifts in light are helping experts better understand how the gas giant’s upper atmosphere heats and cools.
Jonathan Nichols from the University of Leicester, who led the project, described his reaction to the findings. “What a Christmas present it was – it just blew me away,” he said. “We thought the auroras would fade slowly. Instead, the entire region flickered and danced, changing every second.”
To deepen the observations, the Hubble Space Telescope also recorded the same auroral event. But the two telescopes didn’t always agree.
Mystery Lights Puzzle Scientists
The brightest light Webb saw had no clear match in Hubble’s images. This strange difference puzzled the team. To explain it, they suspect that large numbers of low-energy particles must be hitting Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. But until now, such a mix was thought to be impossible.
Nichols admitted the discovery left scientists scratching their heads. “We still don’t understand how this happens,” he said.
The research group now plans to study these differences closely. They hope it could reveal more about Jupiter’s mysterious atmosphere and its space environment.
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