Watch the Webb telescope’s timelapse of Uranus’ bizarre auroras

Scientists have mapped the upper atmosphere of Uranus in detail, revealing a colder, thinner and more unevenly charged layer around the planet than expected.

Using the James Webb Space Telescopea common observatory of NASA and its European and Canadian counterparts, researchers observed Uranus making almost a complete revolution in spacecapturing the faint glow of molecules above the clouds. The study resulted in an unprecedented time-lapse video of nearly a full Uranian day, which can be viewed later in this story.

Infrared observations show that Uranus’ upper atmosphere, also known as the ionosphere, is not uniform. THE researchwhich appears in the Geophysical research letters log, focuses on where the ice giant is aurora shape and how the planet’s strangely tilted magnetic field shapes them.

“This is the first time we are able to see the upper atmosphere of Uranus in three dimensions,” said Paola Tiranti, lead author of the study from Northumbria University in the United Kingdom. a declaration. “Thanks to Webb’s sensitivity, we can trace how energy moves upward in the planet’s atmosphere and even see the influence of its unbalanced magnetic field.”

Although it has the potential to shed light on how far away the giant exoplanets interact with their space environment, the charged upper layer of Uranus is among the least well understood in the solar system. Before the study, scientists relied largely on indirect estimates.

The team tracked a faint infrared glow from a charged molecule called a trihydrogen cation, which forms above the planet, where sunlight and space particles interact with the atmosphere. Because this glow changes with temperature and particle density, it allows scientists to essentially scan the structure of Uranus’ ionosphere.

The data indicates that the atmosphere is weaker than scientists previously thought. This also confirmed that the upper atmosphere is relatively cold and appears to continue to drop in temperature. This is a trend that scientists have noticed over the past 30 years.

Because Uranus turns sidewaysit experiences the most extreme seasons in the solar system. Its poles take turns facing the sun for 21 years straight, leaving the other half in a dark winter of two decades.

“Uranus’ magnetosphere is one of the strangest in the solar system,” Tiranti said, referring to the magnetic shield that surrounds the planet. “It is tilted and offset from the planet’s axis of rotation, which means its auroras sweep across the surface in complex ways.”

Researchers detected bright and dark auroral bands linked to the planet’s unusual magnetic field. Two bright ones shine near the poles, having patterns similar to those seen at Jupiter. The layer’s odd geometry likely channels energy unevenly throughout the atmosphere, creating areas of more or less busy activity, the study found.

Before Webb looked at Uranus for the first time in 2023, most people’s idea of ​​the seventh planet was little more than a featureless blue ball, doing its own thing about 3 billion miles from Earth. That changed after the telescope revealed the planet’s strange vertical rings, band of moonsstorms and a polar cap.

With similar planets common around other stars, researchers hope that knowing how energy, temperature and charged particles behave around Uranus will give scientists a real-world benchmark for interpreting these distant worlds.