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.
Image credit: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, STScI, P. Tiranti, H. Melin, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
在这张发布于2026年2月19日的图像中，NASA的詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜首次提供了天王星电离层的垂直视角，揭示了由其倾斜磁场塑造的极光。
通过观察大气层与行星磁场发生强烈相互作用的区域结构，我们获得了迄今为止最详尽的图像，不仅展示了极光的形成位置及其受磁场影响的方式，还提供了有关天王星大气层自20世纪90年代以来持续冷却的数据。
天王星拥有太阳系中最奇特的磁层。它相对于行星的自转轴是倾斜且偏移的（而且这颗行星几乎是侧躺着绕太阳运行的），这意味着极光在行星表面上的移动方式非常复杂。更好地了解天王星将使我们深入认识冰巨星，并帮助我们更好地描述太阳系外巨行星的特征。
图片来源: ESA/Webb, NASA, CSA, STScI, P. Tiranti, H. Melin, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)
