Overview
- An international team published the first high‑resolution temperature and particle‑density maps of Saturn’s northern lights using JWST’s NIRSpec and NIRCam instruments.
- The maps show that auroral particle rain heats the upper atmosphere, that heating drives winds, and those winds generate electrical currents that power the aurora in a self‑sustaining cycle.
- The feedback explains radio and auroral signals that once looked like a changing spin rate, a puzzle first flagged by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in 2004.
- The JWST measurements were about ten times more accurate than earlier observations, using emissions from the H3+ molecule as a precise thermometer to trace fine heating and cooling.
- The work, led by Northumbria University with UK and US partners and backed by STFC, points to a two‑way atmosphere–magnetosphere link that could reshape how scientists read similar signals on other worlds.