Side-by-side Jupiter images show James Webb’s infrared prowess. It spots

• NASA released new snaps of Jupiter taken by the James Webb Space Telescope in August.

• The Hubble Space Telescope has also taken Jupiter images, but Webb reveals details Hubble couldn’t see.

• Astronomers say Webb’s images give a more complete view of Jupiter’s auroras, rings, and moons.

While the Hubble Space Telescope has been snapping gorgeous photos of Jupiter for decades, new Jupiter images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope in August, invite comparison. Studied side by side, Webb’s shots reveal stunning new details of the gas giant that Hubble couldn’t detect.

“JWST isn’t giving us something clearer than Hubble here, but it is giving us something different,” James O’Donoghue, a planetary scientist from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, told Insider. “I think of JWST as giving us an extra sense.”

Often described as the successor to Hubble, Webb launched on December 25, 2021, after more than two decades of development. Since that time, the $10 billion telescope has traveled more than 1 million miles from Earth and is now stationed in a gravitationally stable orbit, collecting infrared light and peering at objects whose light was emitted more than 13.5 billion years ago, which Hubble can’t see. This is because this light has been shifted into the infrared wavelengths that Webb is specifically designed to detect.

The result: Compared to Hubble, Webb offers sharper and crisper images, and new details of Jupiter’s auroras, storm systems, rings, and tiny moons.

Webb captured the new Jupiter images using its Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), which translates infrared light into colors the human eye can see. The image of Jupiter taken by Webb, above right, was artificially colored to make specific features stand out. Red coloring highlights the planet’s stunning auroras, while light reflected from clouds appears blue. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot — an enormous storm that has been swirling for centuries — is so bright with reflected sunlight that it appears white.

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The Hubble Space Telescope can also spot spot Jupiter’s auroras when capturing ultraviolet light. In the above left image, Hubble captured optical observations of the planet’s northern lights in a composite.

Still, Webb’s infrared image shows the auroras in greater detail, lighting up both the planet’s poles.

Auroras are colorful displays of light that are not unique to Earth. Jupiter has the brightest auroras in the solar system, according to NASA. On both Earth and Jupiter, auroras occur when charged particles, such as protons or electrons, interact with the magnetic field — known as the magnetosphere — that surrounds a planet. Jupiter’s magnetic field is about 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s.

In his research,…