James Webb captures Aurora and Hazes on Jupiter

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and the planet from the sun. It is primarily composed of gas such as hydrogen and helium. So, Jupiter can be introduced as a gas giant which is 11 times wider than Earth.  Jupiter has a lot going on with giant storms, powerful winds, auroras, and extreme temperature and pressure conditions. Before James Webb, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured Jupiter's images. After two years, in 2022 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured new images of the planet. James Webb’s Jupiter observations will give scientists even more important clues about Jupiter’s inner life.

Jupiter's images were captured from the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which has three specialized infrared filters that showcase details of the planet. Infrared light is invisible to the human eye. So, the infrared light has been mapped onto the visible spectrum. Generally, the longest wavelengths of the infrared range appear red and the shortest wavelengths are shown as more blue. 

 Image of Jupiter from three filters – F360M (red), F212N (yellow-green), and F150W2 (cyan) – and alignment due to the planet’s rotation.
 Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team

In the standalone view of Jupiter, created from a composite of several images from Webb. Jupiter's auroras extend to high altitudes above both the northern and southern poles. The auroras shine in a filter mapped to redder colors, which also highlights light reflected from lower clouds and upper hazes. Another different filter, mapped to yellows and greens, shows hazes swirling around the northern and southern poles. The last and third filter, mapped to blues, showcases light that is reflected from a more profound main cloud.  

The Great Red Spot, which is a famous storm that spins counterclockwise at speeds that exceed 400 miles per hour and is big enough to swallow Earth, appears white in these views, as do other clouds because they are reflecting a lot of sunlight. NASA's Hubble space telescope captured the red spot in red color. 

“The brightness here indicates high altitude – so the Great Red Spot has high-altitude hazes, as does the equatorial region,” said Heidi Hammel, James Webb interdisciplinary scientist for solar system observations and vice president for science at AURA. “The numerous bright white ‘spots’ and ‘streaks’ are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms.” By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover.  

In a wide-field view, James Webb sees Jupiter with its faint rings, which are a million times fainter than the planet, and two tiny moons called Amalthea and Adrastea. The fuzzy spots in the lower background are likely galaxies “photobombing” this Jovian view. 

 James Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter system from two filters (F212N (orange) and F335M (cyan)) 
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team

 

 James Webb NIRCam composite image of Jupiter system from two filters(F212N (orange) and F335M (cyan)) with labels
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team

“This one image sums up the science of our Jupiter system program, which studies the dynamics and chemistry of Jupiter itself, its rings, and its satellite system,” Fouchet said. Researchers have already begun analyzing James Webb's data to get new scientific results about our solar system’s largest planet. 

James Webb doesn’t send the neatly packaged data to Earth. Instead, it contains information about the brightness of the light on James Webb’s detectors. When this information arrives at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), JamesWebb’s mission and science operations center collects them as raw data. Next, the STScI processes the data into calibrated files for scientific analysis and delivers it to the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes for dissemination. Then scientists translate that information into images like these during the course of their research. While a team at STScI formally processes images for official release, non-professional astronomers known as citizen scientists often dive into the public data archive to retrieve and process images.   

Image of Jupiter, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on Aug. 25, 2020
Credits: NASA, ESA, STScI, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and the OPAL team