The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will begin investigating the spectacular light shows of solar system giants Uranus and Saturn.
Two separate teams of astronomers at the University of Leicester will use the $10 billion space telescope to study auroras on gas giant Saturn and cold ice giant Uranus. The aim will be to explain in more detail the processes that create these polar light shows on different planets.
“JWST is already changing the way we perceive the universe, from our own cosmic backyard, the solar system, to the first galaxies formed at the dawn of time,” said Henrik Melin, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester. Uranus research, it was stated in the statement. “I am thrilled to have been awarded a position at this extraordinary observatory, and these data will fundamentally shape our understanding of both Saturn and Uranus.”
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Auroras are familiar to sky watchers on Earth as striking Northern Lights and Southern Lights that can be seen across our planet’s poles when they occur.
These light shows are produced on Earth when charged particles emitted from the Sun’s solar wind hit our planet’s protective magnetic field, known as the magnetosphere. These particles flow behind the Earth, traveling along magnetic field lines; But in doing so, they interact with particles in our atmosphere, creating bright light.
When the Sun ejects large amounts of stellar plasma in an event called a coronal mass ejection, aurorae become more prominent and can be seen at lower latitudes on Earth.
Although auroras have been seen before on other planets in the solar system and can be seen around any planet with an atmosphere and magnetic field, less is known about these alien light shows.
Currently, relatively little is known about the auroras of Uranus, an ice giant whose atmosphere consists of water, ammonia, and methane.
In fact, a Ph.D. from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Leicester. Student Emma Thomas confirmed that there is an infrared aurora around Uranus.
Uranus is tilted at an angle of 97.77 degrees due to a past collision with a roughly Earth-sized object. This means that their poles are oriented almost directly towards and away from the Sun, and their auroras are normally positioned around the equator of a solar system planet.
In using JWST to observe the auroras of Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, Melin and his colleagues will investigate something suggested by previous discoveries of Uranus’ auroras: Are this distant planet’s auroras responsible for keeping it warmer than we are? expected?
“The temperature of all gas giant planets, including Uranus, is hundreds of degrees Kelvin/Celsius above what models predict when heated by the sun alone, leaving us with a big question about how these planets are hotter than expected,” Thomas said. he said last year. “One theory suggests that this is caused by energetic aurora, which generates and pushes heat away from the aurora towards the magnetic equator.”
The JWST study of Uranus will begin in early 2025; It will capture images of the ice giant in a single day for the planet, which takes approximately 17 Earth hours. This will allow the team to map light emissions across a full rotation of Uranus’ magnetic field.
Scientists will also aim to discover whether emissions are produced when Uranus’ magnetic field interacts with the solar wind, as on Earth, or whether the interacting charged particles come from sources within the system, similar to how Jupiter creates its auroras. Just as Saturn’s auroras appear to form, there is a possibility that Uranus’ auroras were created as a combination of these events.
The JWST Saturn aurora project, led by Boston University Center for Space Physics scientist Luke Moore, will observe the gas giant’s northern aurora region during the 10.6-hour Saturn day. This will allow the team to monitor how the temperature of this region changes as the gas giant rotates.
By revealing Saturn’s atmospheric auroral energies for the first time, the team hopes to learn more about the sources of charged particles in the gas giant’s atmosphere that drive its auroras.
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Both JWST giant planet surveys will be conducted using the powerful space telescope’s highly sensitive Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument.
Once these findings become available, scientists will be able to better understand the processes that create auroras in the solar system and the role of these mechanisms, especially on Earth. Perhaps the results could also help astronomers gather information about auroras around planets beyond the system: extrasolar planets, or “exoplanets.”
“The majority of exoplanets discovered so far fall into the Neptunian subcategory and are therefore physically similar in size to Neptune and Uranus. “This could also mean similar magnetic and atmospheric properties,” Thomas said. “By analyzing Uranus’ auroras, which are directly coupled to both the planet’s magnetic field and its atmosphere, we can make predictions about the atmospheres and magnetic fields of these worlds, and therefore their suitability. forever.”