The Webb Space Telescope has spotted something weird: a brown dwarf with what appear to be aurorae, what we Earthlings sometimes call the Northern Lights. What makes the observation particularly surprising is that the brown dwarf doesn’t have a nearby star that could cause such an aurora.
The Webb Space Telescope has revealed a world quite alien compared to our own: WASP-107b, a Neptune-like gas giant that orbits a star some 211 light-years from Earth. Webb has now detected water vapor and sulfur dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, as well as sand-like silicate clouds.