NASA’s Juno reveals the darkish origins of one in every of Jupiter’s nice gentle exhibits – Watts Up with that?
From NASA
March 16, 2021
This illustration shows ultraviolet polar aurors on Jupiter and Earth. While the diameter of the Jupiter world is ten times larger than that of the earth, both planets have a significantly similar aurora. Credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / UVS / STScI / MODIS / WIC / IMAGE / ULiège
The gas giant orbiter sheds light on the origins of Jovian aurora shows.
New results from the ultraviolet spectrograph instrument on NASA’s Juno mission reveal for the first time the formation of storms at dawn – the early morning brightening is unique to Jupiter’s spectacular aurors. These immense, temporary light indicators occur at both Jupiter’s poles and were previously only observed by ground-based and orbiting observatories, particularly NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The results of this study were published March 16 in the journal AGU Advances.
Morning storms, discovered by Hubble’s Faint Object Camera in 1994, consist of short-lived but intense lightening and widening of Jupiter’s main auroral oval – an elongated curtain of light that surrounds both poles – near where the atmosphere was in the early Morning area emerges from the darkness. Prior to Juno, observations of the Jupiter ultraviolet aurora had provided only side views, obscuring everything that was happening on the night side of the planet.
“When observing Jupiter’s aurora from Earth, you cannot see beyond the limb into the night side of Jupiter’s poles. Explorations with other spacecraft – Voyager, Galileo, Cassini – were made from a relatively long distance and did not fly over the poles so they could not see the full picture, ”said Bertrand Bonfond, researcher at the University of Liège in Belgium and lead author of the study. “That’s why the Juno data is a real game changer that allows us to better understand what’s happening on the night side, where the morning storms are born.”
Researchers found that morning storms are born on the night side of the gas giant. As the planet spins, the upcoming morning storm spins with it into the daytime, where these complex and intensely bright auroral features become even more luminous, emitting hundreds and thousands of gigawatts of ultraviolet light into space. The jump in brightness implies that morning storms release at least ten times more energy into Jupiter’s upper atmosphere than typical aurora.
This video clip shows the development of a morning storm in Jupiter’s polar aurora. The images for the video were collected using data from the ultraviolet spectrograph instrument on board NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / UVS / ULiège
“When we looked at the entire storm sequence at dawn, we couldn’t help but notice that they are very similar to a type of terrestrial auror called partial storms,” said Zhonghua Yao, co-author of the study at the University of Liege .
Substorms result from brief perturbations in the Earth’s magnetosphere – the region of space controlled by the planet’s magnetic field – that release energy high into the planet’s ionosphere. The similarity between terrestrial and Jovian partial storms is surprising, as the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Earth are radically different. On earth, the magnetosphere is essentially controlled by the interaction of the solar wind – the current of charged particles flowing from the sun – with the earth’s magnetic field. Jupiter’s magnetosphere is mainly populated by particles that escape from the volcanic moon Io and are then ionized by its magnetic field and trapped around the gas giant.
These new findings will allow scientists to further explore the differences and similarities that lead to the formation of aurora and gain a better understanding of how these most beautiful planetary phenomena occur on worlds both within our solar system and beyond.
“The power that Jupiter possesses is amazing. The energy in these morning aurors is another example of just how powerful this huge planet really is, ”said Scott Bolton, Juno principal researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The revelations of the morning storm are another surprise of the Juno mission, which is constantly rewriting the book about the work of the giant planet. With NASA’s latest mission expansion, we look forward to many more new insights and discoveries. “
More about the mission
JPL, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, administers the Juno mission for Principal Investigator Scott J. Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers program administered at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space in Denver built and operates the spaceship.
For more information on Juno, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/juno
https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu
Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:
https://www.facebook.com/NASASolarSystem
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