Webb Maps Uranus’ Upper Atmosphere
ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, STScI, P. Tiranti, H. Melin, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope provided the first vertical view of Uranus’s ionosphere in this image released on Feb. 19, 2026, revealing auroras shaped by its tilted magnetic field.
Getting a look at the structure of the region where the atmosphere interacts strongly with the planet’s magnetic field is giving us the most detailed portrait yet of where its auroras form, how the magnetic field influences them, and also data on how Uranus’s atmosphere has continued to cool since the 1990s.
Uranus has the strangest magnetosphere in the Solar System. It is tilted and offset from the planet’s rotation axis (and this planet already rolls around the Sun nearly on its side), which means auroras move across the surface in complex ways. Better understanding Uranus will give us insight into ice-giant planets and help us better characterize giant planets outside our Solar System.
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Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, STScI, P. Tiranti, H. Melin, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
