Body

NPR’s science podcast “Spacing Out,” featuring its Space Nerd Club group, devoted a May 25 episode to what the hosts described as fresh insights enabled by the James Webb Space Telescope. The segment tied the telescope’s capabilities to three science topics: a Neptune-moon puzzle involving Nereid, a weather-like pattern on the hot Jupiter-like exoplanet WASP-94 A b, and guidance on tracking auroras tied to solar activity.

On the Neptune topic, host Regina Barber and NPR correspondent Katia Riddle discussed Nereid, a moon whose orbit has long been described as unusual. Riddle said Neptune has 16 moons and that researchers had debated for decades whether Nereid formed in place around Neptune or instead arrived later from elsewhere, based in part on the moon’s highly eccentric orbit. Scott Detrow pressed for what Webb has made different: Riddle said scientists could now examine Nereid’s composition more closely, and that the new evidence fits a moon formed around Neptune even with its stretched, elongated orbit.

Riddle and the guests also discussed a leading idea for why Nereid’s orbit looks “smooshed.” The segment described the likely mechanism as an orbital reshaping from Neptune’s larger moon Triton, characterized in the discussion as big enough—about eight times bigger than Nereid—to act like a “bully” during a period when the moons competed for stable real estate. Detrow and Barber framed the story as a cosmic crowding problem, with Triton’s influence offered as the reason an originally Neptune-born moon could still end up on an eccentric path.

In the segment, Riddle described a paper that she said was led by Matthew Belyakov of the California Institute of Technology and published in the journal Science Advances. Belyakov said of the work, “I think there’s a lot of value to having a new understanding of Nereid. It’s a time capsule,” and Barber used that framing to ask what that meant. Belyakov replied that understanding early solar-system events helps fill in other gaps and that this kind of evidence informs questions about the formation history “here on Earth.”

The podcast then shifted from Neptune to an exoplanet, with Barber and Riddle focusing on weather-like conditions on a distant world. Barber said astrophysicists at Johns Hopkins University used Webb to look at the atmosphere of WASP-94 A b, describing it as a hot Jupiter-like planet that is a gas giant orbiting far from its star in human terms—about 18 times closer than Earth is to the sun. She said the analysis examined the region along the boundary between the planet’s day and night sides, where the discussion characterized cloud coverage as “riddled,” while clouds were described as “burned off” along the sunlit portion, leaving clearer skies on the day side.

Detrow asked whether the tidally locked geometry would imply semi-permanent patterns. Barber said the planet’s permanently facing star orientation means the day and night sides stay distinct, and she cited lead author Sagnick Mukherjee’s description of the physics behind that split. Mukherjee said, “There’s this huge temperature difference. What it does is it sets off really fast winds,” linking the temperature contrast to the atmospheric dynamics described in the study.

Barber also discussed what the clouds are made of, contrasting them with Earth’s water-based clouds. She said they are not made of water and described the clouds as dust and bits of rock. The segment quoted astrophysicist Maria Steinrueck of the University of Chicago saying, “These planets are so hot that gemstones are clouds,” which Barber described as part of why the cloud composition could form from those materials under extreme temperatures.

The final part of the segment returned to Earth, turning from Webb’s observations of distant worlds to what auroras can indicate about space weather. Barber and Riddle said the northern lights are linked to solar storms, with Barber citing that this year and last the U.S. saw strong auroras in many states and recalling a much more extreme historical example from 1859. Barber said nothing like that 1859 scenario had happened recently, adding that NOAA and NASA-tracked solar storms in the segment’s timeframe had been smaller than the famous event, and Riddle advised listeners to consult NOAA’s website for aurora timing and location predictions.

figures:

  • series_id: GDI source: fred transformation: raw as_of: 2026-05-25 caption: “This chart would show the level of real Gross Domestic Income (GDI) from the FRED series GDI as available on the article’s publish date, 2026-05-25.”