Neptune’s auroras: the final giant has joined the glow-up! 🔵 For the first time, esawebb has captured bright auroral activity on Neptune — and it’s unlike anything we’ve seen before. Auroras happen when charged particles (often from the Sun) get caught in a planet’s magnetic field and crash into the upper atmosphere, releasing that signature glowing light. We’ve seen them on Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus… but Neptune’s remained elusive — until now. Thanks to Webb’s near-infrared vision, astronomers finally spotted Neptune’s shimmering auroras glowing in cyan. But here’s the twist: unlike Earth’s auroras, which stick to the poles, Neptune’s appear around its mid-latitudes — a result of its wildly tilted magnetic field (47 degrees off its rotation axis!). Using Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph, scientists also: – Detected the aurora-linked molecule H₃⁺ for the first time on Neptune – Measured the temperature of the upper atmosphere (spoiler: it’s much colder than expected) – ...