Webb images in the infrared the aurora of Neptune
Click for original image.
Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope have captured the first infrared images of the aurora of Neptune, confirming that the gas giant produces this phenomenon.
The picture to the right combines infrared data from Webb and optical imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope. The white splotches near the bottom of the globe are clouds seen by Hubble. The additional white areas in the center and near the top are clouds detected by Webb, while the greenish regions to the right are aurora activity detected by Webb.
The auroral activity seen on Neptune is also noticeably different from what we are accustomed to seeing here on Earth, or even Jupiter or Saturn. Instead of being confined to the planet’s northern and southern poles, Neptune’s auroras are located at the planet’s geographic mid-latitudes — think where South America is located on Earth.
This is due to the strange nature of Neptune’s magnetic field, originally discovered by Voyager 2 in 1989, which is tilted by 47 degrees from the planet’s rotation axis. Since auroral activity is based where the magnetic fields converge into the planet’s atmosphere, Neptune’s auroras are far from its rotational poles.
The data also found that the temperature of Neptune’s upper atmosphere has cooled significantly since it was first measured by Voyager 2 in 1989, dropping by several hundred degrees.
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The ice giants, and their moons really deserve dedicated mission’s….. The current focus on missions to Venus are great, and dragonfly heading to Titan is awesome.. missions to the icy moons of Jupiter are exciting, ( as an aside, my daughter did a school science project on Europa… I must be doing something right!) But there is so much we have no clue about Neptune and Uranus. They really deserve there own orbiters, they are so alien I’m sure they would throw light on exoplanets and give huge clues to solar system formation. The downside is that the physics of getting there and getting into orbit means non of us here will likely be around to see it. My daughter will be tho…
“I was astonished — Neptune’s upper atmosphere has cooled by several hundreds of degrees,” Melin said. “In fact, the temperature in 2023 was just over half of that in 1989.”
Makes you almost wonder if one of the data sets is in error. Neptune is approaching perihelion, after all…
Neptune has a freaky thermosphere, but even so….well, it surprised the scientists on the team, so I feel I have a right to be surprised, too.
I second Lee’s wish for an ice giants orbiter. Yes, it’s hard and time consuming and expensive to get out there, but these are by far the least examined planets in the solar System; and we know these are some of the most common planet types in the galaxy. 36 years is too long to have gone without a return visit.
I have no clue at all about orbital mechanics, but does anyone have any idea if it would be possible to launch both a Neptune and Uranus orbiter on the same… Falcon heavy or starship at huge velocity and sort out the trajectory on route? I doubt it, I know it’s not a “grand tour” set up… And orbital insertion will no doubt need gravity assists etc, but man… I would love to see those crazy worlds close up!
Lee S,
Sure, but it might take longer for both, considering what the mass of both spacecraft are. I would always use a gravity assist, especially from Jupiter to get it out far. Looking at the planets’ positions currently, I would use a Jupiter assist for Neptune, and Jupiter/Saturn assists for Uranus. Orbiter or flyby?
If you going for an orbiter, I would have a dedicated launcher. Reading about the development of outer solar system probes for the last 50 years, there is a lot of bloat on what to bring, and how it gets whittled down. If you have an orbiter, you might as well bring lander(s). You will have to bring a motor to help slowdown and correct when you get close.
”The ice giants, and their moons really deserve dedicated mission’s[sic]”
NASA’s second-highest unfounded priority in planetary science (after Mars Sample Return) is the Uranus Orbiter and (atmospheric) Probe. If NASA could ever get MSR over the funding hump, UOP is the next flagship in line.
How do you justify expensive missions to the gas giants and moons when you are taking a DODGE scalpel to the rest of government.. including research?
Would love to send something to both planets. Alas:
1) Neptune and Uranus are no longer lined up in a way that would make a single launch feasible.
2) NASA simply does not have sufficient plutonium-238 for the number of MMRTG’s you would need for TWO flagship class orbiters, nor will it even in the 2030’s, unless there is some dramatic funding infusion to increase plutonium production. Consider that the Uranus orbiter and probe concept study for the last Decadal Survey base-lined three next gen RTGs each producing 245 W of electrical power for a total of 735W. But not long ago, NASA reported that it may not have enough plutonium available to power just the mission to Uranus recommended by the latest Decadal survey until the latter half of the 2030s!* https://spacenews.com/plutonium-availability-constrains-plans-for-future-planetary-missions/
3) The mass of a flagship mission orbiter would eat every last bit of delta-V that a Falcon Heavy could deliver. No doubt you could pack two of ’em in a Starship fairing, but then that means more refueling launches…
4) But now that we’re back to using just commercial launchers for these missions, you’re not actually saving significant money by shaving off a launch. A flagship mission costs about $3-5 billion these days. The Falcon Heavy launch for Europa Clipper, which was completely expended, cost NASA $178 million, which is hardly even a rounding error in the mission budget. A Starship launch even with refueling launches is not likely to cost more.
I think there’s good odds we will see a Uranus orbiter given a greenlight within the decade, though. It’s the top Decadal priority after Mars Sample Return. The tough part, as you say, is how long it takes to get there, and how many of us will be alive to see it!
____
* Note that the coming Dragonfly mission to Titan employs one (1) MMRTG, and this is going to seriously limit its rate of data return as it is. Probably not a lot of high res panoramas.
P.S. Relevant news today: China’s Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL) announced a Neptune mission.
“Potentially launching around 2039 is a nuclear-powered mission to Neptune to study its ring, atmosphere, and the moon Triton. The orbiter mission would aim to explore the habitability of the Neptunian system and search for potential ocean worlds.”
https://spacenews.com/china-unveils-planetary-exploration-roadmap-targeting-habitability-and-extraterrestrial-life/
It;s all a bit sketchy, and that’s a far away date, so maybe it’s just something that bears keeping an eye on for now.
Richard M: First, this article is just a review of the tweet Jay provided in yesterday’s quick links. Second, anything proposed that won’t fly for another decade and a half is something that we should not take very seriously.
Third, based on how China’s deep space planetary program keeps changing, and getting delayed, everything here should be taken with a grain of salt. Compare the earlier list I link to in the quick links. The projects have changed, and all have been delayed significantly.
China faces serious long term systemic problems that are eventually going to impact its government-run top-down space program. That those problems will impact its fake commercial companies as well.
Gary H,
You asked: “How do you justify expensive missions to the gas giants and moons when you are taking a DODGE scalpel to the rest of government.. including research?”
1. DOGE is only going after waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption. We do not pay our taxes for government to support any of these four items. Many of the functions that the federal government has taken on contain these four items but are not these items themselves. The Department of Education is one that has a lot of all four, but the department is not in and of itself waste, fraud, or abuse of funding, but it is outside the authority that the Constitution grants the federal government. Thus, many expenditures within NASA can be eliminated or reduced without hurting its scientific goals. DOGE’s recommendations (scalpel) can reduce the unnecessary spending without reducing the production of the research.
2. As humans, we are curious and explore the world and universe around us. It is good to perform the occasional flagship space mission. NASA and other research organizations perform decadal surveys (science priority reviews every ten-ish years) to determine what the priorities should be for the next decade or so. These include expensive research missions (flagship), medium missions, and lesser missions. These kinds of reviews ensure that the available funds go toward worthwhile missions, reducing wasteful missions. However, as mkent and Richard M noted, even some of NASA’s priority missions are not funded. Unfulfilled missions do not necessarily carry over to the next decadal survey. Priorities change over time.
3. Sometimes missions end up being far too expensive. The James Webb Space Telescope should have been cancelled a very long time ago and restarted with a different team, as its delays and budget overruns redirected close to ten billion dollars from other astronomical projects that also could have provided a great deal of research. JWST may be providing an amazing data, changing virtually every aspect of how we see the early universe, but we could have had eight billion dollars more research if it had been cancelled after the first wasted billion and had been built and launched for another billion.
4. Government has only three purposes:
A. Defend its citizens and their rights from all enemies, foreign and domestic — to keep us safe
B. Peaceably resolve disputes as an indifferent third party
C. Stay out of the citizens’ way
However, the U.S. Constitution also specifies a few additional functions of the federal government (Article I, section 8), such as a patent office and a post office. The Tenth Amendment specifies that the federal government has only the powers delegated to it by the Constitution and all other powers lie with the states or with We the People.
We have a legislative branch that is supposed to represent us, performing the function of item C. We have a judicial branch to perform the function of item B. And we have an executive branch to perform the function of item A. The executive branch is divided into departments, and the necessary ones are the departments of war (Defense Department), peace (State Department), police (Justice Department), and treasury. Because they are outside the purview of the powers and duties if the federal government, DOGE should be advocating the elimination of virtually every other department and most or all independent agencies, including NASA. Research is not a federal function, but patenting the results of civilian research and development is a constitutional function of the federal government. Unfortunately, the various departments and agencies that usurp our constitutional powers are not wasteful, fraudulent, abusive (mostly), or corrupt. Although, now that I think about it, they are a corruption of the Constitution.
There was a time when it was We the People who performed the research in this country. We private citizens, not the government, paid for and built the early observatories. Worldwide, it was civilians who invented everything that came from the Victorian Age. During the two centuries before WWII, we had many discoveries and inventions that dramatically changed the world. The steam engine, which soon was placed on locomotives to create the modern form of train and placed on ships to give mankind an independence from the whims of the winds. Electricity gave us the telegraph and its instantaneous communications, and electricity was seen as so useful — the electric light and most of the inventions that make the modern electric grid — that the Victorian Age population was convinced that it would power everything. They were not too far wrong, as electricity can be used to successfully power virtually anything, including all forms of transportation other than planes, ships, and rockets, and electricity can power almost everything in the home and the workplace.
Telephones, phonographs, photographs, and moving pictures (with color and synchronized sound) made their own marks on lifestyles. The wireless telegraph turned into voice radio (& music) and television. Dynamite and TNT (high explosives), dyes and fertilizer. The discovery of germs and the solution of washing hands, anesthetics and surgery, and antibiotics. Air conditioning — what a difference that made — and refrigeration reduced food spoilage and improved food safety, and ice became commonplace. The automobile, the airplane, and the rocket were invented before WWII, but a decade later the rocket was made practical, capable of taking payloads to orbit. To be fair, government commissioned the invention of the jet and made the rocket practical; both were for military reasons. After WWII, government funded a great amount of research, and the number of innovations and inventions decreased. Life today is surprisingly similar to how it was in 1960, whereas in 1960 it was dramatically different than it was in 1900, which was completely different than it was in 1840.
So it isn’t DOGE that should eliminate NASA missions to the gas giants and moons. It is following the U.S. Constitution that should. In the past couple of decades, we have seen that commercial enterprises are able to achieve more with less money than NASA has done. Thus, as in the Victorian Age, it should be We the People, not the government, who fund quite a bit of our explorations, innovations, and inventions. That way, we get what we want, rather than only what the government wants.
Sorry, Bob — I missed your link! Had I seen it, I would have made a reference directly to *that* rather than the SN story!
I don’t disagree with you about the….inchoate nature of these DSEL pronouncements. It’s quite far off in the future. I *do* think that Chinese Outer Solar System missions are an inevitability — they really are getting that good now, and they seem to have the resources for it — but we’ll just have to wait to see how they take concrete form before we can make anything of them.
I wish I were as pessimistic (optimistic?) as you about the prospects of the CCP regime. But I am persuaded that it’s just a lot more resilient than I’d once hoped. The structural problems of China are very real, but I am just less sanguine that I once was that it will derail their military and space ambitions, let alone bring about the collapse of the regime, at least in my lifetime. But I suppose that is a subject for another discussion.
Richard M: As to China’s future, just remember that if in 1990 you had said the Soviet Union would be gone in a year you would have been called insane.