This Is the First-Ever Image of Neptune’s Auroral Glow

The Webb Space Telescope has given us our first glimpse of Neptune glowing with bright auroras, a visually stunning phenomenon that has long evaded scientists studying the ice giant. Using Webb’s near-infrared spectrograph, astronomers have captured new images of Neptune that finally reveal the planet’s mysterious auroral activity. Faint hints of Neptune’s auroras were first detected during Voyager 2’s flyby of the planet, but Webb’s latest discovery is the first direct evidence of the phenomenon. “Turns out, actually imaging the auroral activity on Neptune was only possible with Webb’s near-infrared sensitivity,” Henrik Melin, a researcher at Northumbria University and lead author of a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, said in a statement. “It was so stunning to not just see the auroras, but the detail and clarity of the signature really shocked me.” Neptune lies on the outer edges of the solar system, around 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) away from the ... Read full article.