We’ve spotted auroras on Neptune for the first time

For the first time, the researchers ranged infrared Auroras in the atmosphere of Neptune, verifying scientific speculations.

NASA Voyager 2 Mission when Neptune flew in 1989, he found the tantalizing touch Aurora Activity in the clouds of ice giants. However, scientists could not verify the phenomenon during the time, as existing instruments were too weak. Now, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) finally gave them to detect power.

“It’s really anticipated it has been to meet the years,” he says Heidi Hammel Washington DC Astronomy at the Association of Research Universities.

Hammel and his colleagues used Jwst’s Nirspec, a powerful infrared tool to capture the spectroscopic images of Neptune and analyze different light lengths provided by the planets. In 2023, researchers used a detection tool Infrared Auroras on Uranus. This time, he also found Neptune.

The images also left Hammel and his team to start building Neptune’s magnetic field map. This is especially exciting that the planet has some unusual poles in the solar system.

Unlike land, Jupiter or Saturn, Neptune’s magnetic poles are not focused on its rotation poles. Instead, “almost half of the radius of the planet” compensates, “Hammel says. As a result, Aurora appears as irregular blobs in the region where South America sits on the ground.

In addition to being perception of Auroras, JWST observations of Neptune’s ionosphere – Loaded particle layer Some planets are empty – it is cooling. Now, the average is about 10 percent of Voyager than when it was almost 36 years old. Similar changes have been detected in Uranus.

If the authors of the new study are not sure why this cooling, 2026 expects the next JWST observation period, will offer more clues.