James Webb telescope spots giant auroras rolling through Uranus' atmosphere

A series of four small boxes on the left of the image and one large box on the right, each showing a circle with blue in the bottom left of the circle and a ring of glowing red around it, representing Uranus' atmosphere.

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope just mapped the mysterious upper atmosphere of Uranus for the first time, revealing strange new features of the planet's mysterious magnetic field and glowing auroras.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observed Uranus rotating for 15 hours (nearly a full Uranian day) to learn more about how ice giants distribute energy in the upper layers of their atmospheres and to investigate how the planet's auroras operate.