Scientists suspected the ice giant hosted auroras—and had already observed them on Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. But an observation of Neptune's lights remained elusive for decades

NAS's James Webb Space Telescope has captured Neptune’s glowing auroras in the best detail yet. Hints of auroras were first faintly detected in ultraviolet light during a flyby of the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1989.

Webb has filled in many gaps left by Voyager 2, the only spacecraft to visit the planet. In 2022, the telescope captured Neptune's ghostly rings and revealed a band of clouds around a known vortex at the planet's south pole for the first time.