In the Webb image, a long-lived jet stream known as the 'ribbon wave' meanders across Saturn's northern mid-latitudes, with a small spot below representing a lingering remnant from the 'Great Springtime Storm' of 2010 to 2012. Several storms dotting Saturn's southern hemisphere are also visible in Webb's image. Pointed edges of Saturn's hexagon-shaped jet stream at its north pole are faintly visible in both images, and these are likely the last high-resolution looks of the hexagon until the 2040s, as Saturn's northern pole enters winter and will shift into darkness for 15 years.
3 microns, with the feature potentially coming from a layer of high-altitude aerosols or auroral activity. 5 billion miles, about the same as Uranus in our solar system. The research team found multiple lines of evidence that 29 Cygni b formed from a bottom-up accretion process.
Saturn's icy rings glow in an infrared view from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope released on March 25, 2026, appearing extremely bright because they are made of highly reflective water ice. The Hubble image was captured in August 2024 as part of the OPAL monitoring program, and the Webb image was captured a few months later using Director's Discretionary Time, with a paper describing these findings published Tuesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.