NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble Space Telescope have teamed up to capture new views of Saturn, revealing the planet in strikingly different ways. Observing in complementary wavelengths of light, the two space observatories provide scientists with a richer, more layered understanding of the gas giant’s atmosphere.
Both sense sunlight reflected from Saturn’s banded clouds and hazes, but where Hubble reveals subtle color variations across the planet, Webb’s infrared view senses clouds and chemicals at many different depths in the atmosphere, from the deep clouds to the tenuous upper atmosphere.
Image: Saturn (Webb NIRCam and Hubble WFC3/UVIS)
Together, scientists can effectively ‘slice’ through Saturn’s atmosphere at multiple altitudes, like peeling back the layers of an onion. Each telescope tells a different part of Saturn’s story, and the observations together help researchers understand how Saturn’s atmosphere works as a connected three-dimensional system. Both complement previous observations done by NASA’s Cassini orbiter during its time studying the Saturnian system from 1997 to 2017.
The Hubble image seen here was captured as part of a more than a decade long monitoring program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) in August 2024, while the Webb image was captured a few months later using Director’s Discretionary Time.
The newly released images highlight features from Saturn’s busy atmosphere.
In the Webb image, a long-lived jet stream known as the “ribbon wave” meanders across the northern mid-latitudes, influenced by otherwise undetectable atmospheric waves. Just below that, a small spot represents a lingering remnant from the “Great Springtime Storm” of 2010 to 2012. Several other storms dotting the southern hemisphere of Saturn are visible in Webb’s image, as well.
Image: Saturn (Webb NIRCam Image)
Image: Saturn (WFC3/UVIS)
All these features are shaped by powerful winds and waves beneath the visible cloud deck, making Saturn a natural laboratory for studying fluid dynamics under extreme conditions.
Several of the pointed edges of Saturn’s iconic hexagon-shaped jet stream at its north pole, discovered by NASA’s Voyager spacecraft in 1981, are also faintly visible in both images. It remains one of the solar system’s most intriguing weather patterns. Its persistence over decades highlights the stability of certain large-scale atmospheric processes on giant planets. These are likely the last high-resolution looks we’ll see of the famous hexagon until the 2040’s, as the northern pole enters winter and will shift into darkness for 15 years.
In Webb’s infrared observations, Saturn’s poles appear distinctly grey-green, indicating light emitting at wavelengths around 4.3 microns. This distinct feature could come from a layer of high-altitude aerosols in Saturn’s atmosphere that scatters light differently at those latitudes. Another possible explanation is auroral activity, as charged molecules interacting with the planet’s magnetic field can produce glowing emissions near the poles.
Image: Saturn (Webb NIRCam Wide Image)
NASA’s Hubble and Webb have already explored Saturn’s auroras, provided insights into Jupiter’s spectacular auroras also seen with Hubble, confirmed the auroras of Uranus glimpsed in 2011 by Hubble, and detected Neptune’s auroras for the first time with Webb.
In Webb’s infrared image, the rings are extremely bright because they are made of highly reflective water ice. In both images, we’re seeing the sunlit face of the rings, a little less so in the Hubble image, hence the shadows visible underneath on the planet.
There are also subtle ring features such as spokes and structure in the B ring (the thick central region of the rings) that appear differently between the two observatories. The F ring, the outermost ring, looks thin and crisp in the Webb image, while it only slightly glows in the Hubble image.
Saturn’s orbit around the Sun, combined with the position of Earth in its annual orbit, determines our changing viewing angle of Saturn’s face and ring.
These 2024 observations, taken 14 weeks apart, show the planet moving from northern summer toward the 2025 equinox. As Saturn transitions into southern spring, and later southern summer in the 2030’s, Hubble and Webb will have progressively better views of that hemisphere.
Hubble’s observations of Saturn for decades have built a record of its evolving atmosphere. Programs like OPAL, with its annual monitoring, are allowing scientists to track storms, banding patterns, and seasonal shifts over time. Webb now adds powerful infrared capabilities to this ongoing record, extending what researchers can measure about Saturn’s atmospheric structure and dynamic processes.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
To learn more about Webb, visit:
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for over three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
To learn more about Hubble, visit:
Downloads & Related Information
The following sections contain links to download this article's images and videos in all available resolutions followed by related information links, media contacts, and if available, research paper and Spanish translation links.
