In Photos: Webb Telescope Reveals Massive Auroras On Jupiter
These observations of Jupiter's auroras were captured with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's ... More NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on Dec. 25, 2023.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has revealed enormous swirling auroras on Jupiter for the first time. Hundreds of times more intense and brighter than those seen on Earth, they're caused both by high-energy particles from the sun but also from Jupiter's moon, Io — the most volcanic body in the solar system.
The stunning images below reveal how the gas giant's magnetic field and atmospheric dynamics combine to produce something truly unique in the solar system.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured new details of the auroras on our solar system's ... More largest planet. The dancing lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth.
All auroras occur when high-energy particles enter a planet's atmosphere near its magnetic poles. The particles, which travel to a planet from the sun as the solar wind, then collide with gas atoms in a planet's atmosphere to produce photons of light. That's a textbook explanation for Earth and Jupiter, but the gas giant planet has something extra that makes its auroras significantly more intense.
Captured on December 25, 2023, using its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the Webb Telescope's images of Jupiter's auroral emissions were possible because it can detect emissions from trihydrogen cation, a molecule formed when high-energy electrons strike molecular hydrogen. The resulting emission — high up in Jupiter's atmosphere — is bright in infrared light, which Webb is uniquely sensitive to.
It's thought that Jupiter's strong magnetic field grabs charged particles from its surroundings — not only those from the solar wind but also those thrown into space by the large volcanoes on its moon Io.
Aurora on Jupiter, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2014.
Although Webb saw the auroras on Jupiter in 2023, the Hubble Space Telescope did not — despite the same observations being made simultaneously in the ultraviolet light by both space observatories. 'Bizarrely, the brightest light observed by Webb had no real counterpart in Hubble's pictures," said Jonathan Nichols from the University of Leicester in the U.K., who led the research. "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.'
Hubble photographed aurora around Jupiter's poles in 2016, which were also overseen by Nichols.
The James Webb Space Telescope's 2022 image of Jupiter.
Arguably, one of the most spectacular images of Jupiter ever taken was one from the Webb Telescope in 2022, as part of the Early Release Science program shortly after it began science operations. The image above, of Jupiter on July 27, 2022, was taken using Webb's NIRCam infrared instrument and showed the giant planet's mighty storms (including its 'Great Red Spot,' an Earth-sized anticyclonic storm), cloud bands, rings and unprecedented views of the planet's auroras over its north and south poles. The jaw-dropping image can be downloaded from the European Space Agency website.
These observations of Jupiter's auroras (shown on the left of the above image) at 3.36 microns ... More (F335M) were captured with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on Dec. 25, 2023.
Webb is the most ambitious and complex space science telescope ever constructed, with a massive 6.5-meter primary mirror that will be able to detect the faint light of far-away stars and galaxies. It's designed to detect infrared light emitted by distant stars, planets and clouds of gas and dust. During its initial 10-year mission, which began in 2022, Webb will study the solar system, directly image exoplanets, photograph the first galaxies, and explore the mysteries of the origins of the Universe.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
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Elon Musk gave an update on his plan for SpaceX Starship to reach Mars: 5 things to know
Could humanity be just a few short years away from its first cosmic pioneers stepping foot on Mars? If tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has anything to say about it, yes. Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, has for years dreamed of ushering in a "multiplanetary" era where humans would set out toward the stars to establish a sprawling civilization on the Red Planet. And to achieve this grandiose dream, Musk has aggressively sought for his commercial spaceflight company to develop its ambitious Starship spacecraft. The towering megarocket, composed of both an upper-stage vehicle and a lower-stage booster, has faced a series of setbacks in its three most recent flight tests. But that hasn't stopped Musk, the world's richest man, from making big promises for the future of Starship and its role in U.S. spaceflight ambitions. His latest bold predictions for Starship came in a video SpaceX posted online last week. In the video, which the company shared Thursday, May 29 on Musk's social media site X, the SpaceX founder offered a detailed timeline for Starship's first uncrewed trip to Mars, which would be followed by human missions. 'Progress is measured by the timeline to establishing a self-sustaining civilization on Mars,' Musk said during his talk, referring to Starship. 'Each launch is about learning more and more about what's needed to make life multi-planetary and to improve Starship to the point where it can be taking, ultimately, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to Mars.' Musk laid out his vision at a time when President Donald Trump has made clear his intentions to align NASA's spaceflight objectives with the goals of SpaceX. That latest indication came Friday, May 30 with the release of the White House's budget proposal, which would tap the private sector to help lay the groundwork for future Mars endeavors. 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Elon Musk gave an update on his plan for SpaceX Starship to reach Mars: 5 things to know
Elon Musk gave an update on his plan for SpaceX Starship to reach Mars: 5 things to know In a video SpaceX released on X, Musk offered a detailed timeline for Starship's first uncrewed trip to Mars, which would be followed by human missions. Show Caption Hide Caption SpaceX's latest unmanned Starship rocket spins out of control SpaceX's latest unmanned Starship broke up less than an hour after its launch. Speaking to SpaceX employees in Texas, Musk described the goal of sending humans to Mars as essential 'for the long term survival of civilization." Under his vision, humans would not just step on the planet before departing, but would remain to establish a settlement that could function independently. Musk also laid out his vision at a time when President Donald Trump has made clear his intentions to align NASA's spaceflight objectives with the goals of SpaceX. Could humanity be just a few short years away from its first cosmic pioneers stepping foot on Mars? 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SpaceX then shared video of Musk's talk two days later, which he made in front of employees from Starbase, the company's launch site near the U.S.-Mexico border that recently became its own Texas city. It's unclear when Musk gave the presentation. Musk described the goal of sending humans to Mars as essential 'for the long term survival of civilization." Under his vision, humans would not just step on the planet before departing, but would remain to establish a settlement that could function independently if any cataclysmic event were to ever happen on Earth. "I think it would be the best adventure that one could possibly do, is to go and help build a new civilization on a new planet," Musk said to applause. Why does Musk want to send Starship to Mars in 2026? Musk wants to send the first uncrewed Starship to Mars by the end of 2026 for a very critical reason: The timeline coincides with an orbital alignment around the sun that would shorten the journey between Earth and Mars. 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To meet Musk's high expectations, SpaceX is looking to expand operations to Florida in order to ramp up both Starship production and testing. Trump wants $1 billion for private Mars exploration Musk could also have some assistance from the White House, as President Trump has routinely voiced his support for SpaceX's Martian ambitions. While Trump's recently-released 2026 budget proposal would cut NASAs funding by about 25% overall, it does call for allocating more than $1 billion for Mars exploration. That includes established a new NASA initiative called the Commercial Mars Payload Services Program (CMPS). The program would operate similar to NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program by awarding contracts to private companies that would develop spacesuits, vehicles and other technology aimed at reaching the Red Planet. Contributing: Reuters Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@
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Will the Milky Way crash into the Andromeda galaxy? Maybe not.
For more than a century, astronomers have watched the Andromeda galaxy, a massive swirl of neighboring stars, speed toward the Milky Way. And in recent years, measurements using the Hubble Space Telescope seemed to confirm a long-held prophecy: In about four or five billion years' time, the two galaxies will clash, ultimately merging into a colossal and unrecognizable new galaxy. A fresh survey of both galaxies and—crucially—several of the other weighty galaxies in the same corner of the cosmos has now cast doubt on that calamitous outcome. The new forecast looked billions of years into the future and found that the odds of an Andromeda and Milky Way merger is about fifty-fifty. 'A coin flip is the more accurate description,' says Till Sawala, an astrophysicist at the University of Helsinki and a co-author of the new study. A messy galactic apocalypse is no longer a guarantee. As noted in the team's new study, published today in the journal Nature Astronomy, 'proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated.' Earth won't be around in five billion years' time; it'll likely be scorched and swallowed up by our expanding, dying Sun. But if the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies successfully swerve around one another, that's good news for future worlds. A merger on this scale often sees the supermassive black holes at their hearts of each galaxy unify and expand into a fearsome, hyper-energetic astrophysical monster. That prevents nearby gas cooling down and gathering up to form new stars—and without new stars, you won't get new planets. The possibility of a galactic near-miss is 'somehow comforting,' says Alister Graham, a galaxy researcher at the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia and who wasn't involved with the new research. It's nice to think the Milky Way 'still has a long, planet-forming future ahead of it.' Astronomers witness galaxy mergers happening throughout all of space and time. Two similarly massive galaxies uniting is referred to as a major merger, whereas if a larger galaxy ingests a smaller one, it's known as a minor merger. Although some stars get torn apart by the extreme gravitational interactions of the two galaxies churning about—and some, including their planets, will be scattered like confetti in all directions—but the spaces between individual stars are so vast that most of them don't collide. And although the smaller galaxies can vanish into the maws of the larger ones, the result is often constructive. 'Minor mergers deliver both stars and gas—the raw material for future star formation—into the host galaxy. The stellar winds from newly formed stars enrich the interstellar medium with dust and metals, further fueling the star formation cycle,' says Graham. Even the Milky Way shows evidence of having been assembled via multiple galactic smash-ups. 'Up to 50 percent of the mass in galaxies today come from previous galaxies cannibalized,' says Christopher Conselice, an extragalactic astronomer at the University of Manchester in England and who wasn't involved with the new research. Though astronomers have known that Andromeda is careening toward the Milky Way since the turn of the 20th Century, they weren't sure how direct, or glancing, the clash would be. But in 2012, a landmark study using Hubble came to a definitive conclusion: Based on the motions of their stars, and the galaxies' hefty masses, both would be gravitationally drawn into one another for a head-on collision in four to five billion years. (Later studies have come up with slightly earlier or later timelines for when the merger would happen, but never cast doubt on its inevitability.) And about two billion years after the tempestuous major merger, the two ink-like star spirals would settle down and coalescence. 'It would be an elliptical blob,' says Sawala. Since 2012, this outcome became gospel among the scientific community, and a textbook fact. 'Should the Milky Way and Andromeda be all that matter—sorry about the pun—then they would be heading straight at each other,' says Graham. But the possibility of a future smash-up depends on the behavior of everything else in our Local Group, too: the panoply of at least 100 galaxies hanging about in this part of the universe. Other big galaxies in our neck of the woods might push or pull on the two voyagers over time. Sawala's team decided to simulate the evolution of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies ten billion years into the future. But while doing so, they also accounted for other major players in the Local Group: specifically, the spiral-shaped (and third-largest) Triangulum galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud (or LMC), an irregular galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. The team used data from both Hubble and the European Space Agency's stargazing Gaia space observatory to more precisely determine the motions of these galaxies, as well as their masses—comprised of both ordinary matter and the invisible, but more prevalent, dark matter. Although the Triangulum Galaxy was already known to be quite massive, the LMC was thought to be a bit of a lightweight. But the new data suggest that it's surprisingly massive—equivalent to 10 to 20 percent of the mass of the Milky Way. 'And that will have an effect on how the Milky Way moves through space,' says Sawala. The team simulated the motions of these four heavyweight galaxies thousands of times. While the Triangulum galaxy's gravitational influence conspired to bring the Milky Way and Andromeda together, the LMC had a repellent effect. And when all four danced together, the odds of an eventual major merger was just one-in-two. 'There are going to be uncertainties in how and when the Milky Way and Andromeda would merge,' says Conselice. Dark matter may act as a binding force. But dark energy, a mysterious force that seems to push everything the universe apart, will also play a role—and recent data suggests it's strength can change over time. That makes forecasting a far-flung galactic merger somewhat tricky. But it's safe to say that it's no longer a certainty that these two galaxies will collide. Some astronomers have suggested that if they do, the new galaxy could be named Milkomeda. That moniker doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. Don't worry, Sawala says: 'We will have billions of years to think of a better name.' Either way, galactic pandemonium will shape the Milky Way's future. Even though the LMC is pushing Andromeda and our own galaxy apart, the team's simulations also show with that, within the next two billion years, the LMC will spiral into us and be gobbled up by a merciless Milky Way. 'It's basically 100 percent that this will happen,' says Sawala. 'There's no escaping that.'
