Jupiter boasts some of the most spectacular auroras in the solar system-vast, super-energetic fields of light that are permanently on display and bigger than planet Earth.
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Because the auroras are fed by an never-ending supply of energy, they are hundreds of times more powerful than our terrestrial auroras and, unlike our’s, they never cease.
Luckily, Hubble’s observations are perfectly timed with NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which is now in the solar wind near Jupiter, and will be entering its orbit early in July 2016.
For nearly five years, NASA has awaited the arrival of the Juno spacecraft to Jupiter, to understand its atmosphere more closely, its structure and determine the gas giant’s origins.
“We can actually listen to what it’s like to leave the Sun and enter Jupiter”, Juno’s principal investigator Scott Bolton said at a NASA press conference June 30.
The strong magnetic field of Jupiter actually snatches charged particles from its surroundings.
In this case, the obstacle is Jupiter’s magnetosphere, the largest in the Solar System.
An artist’s impression shows a unique type of exoplanet discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope.
The photo shows a vivid aurora, similar to the Northern Lights on Earth, over one of the gas giant’s poles. The aurorae on Jupiter are produced in the same way, as the magnetic field interacts with particles travelling along the solar wind. Juno will receive commands later today to initiate a sequence that will put it in orbit around Jupiter, including a 35-minute engine burn, and it will meet up with the planet on July 4. Juno is the first spacecraft devoted to studying Jupiter only, flying 5,000 kilometers closer than any other spacecraft has before. While on Earth the phenomenon is caused by charged particles raining down from the sun, Jupiter has an additional aurora “dynamo”. Juno will get in closer and will provide the most detailed look at the planet’s polar regions, clouds and auroras. They stretch across a swath of Jupiter almost three times larger than Earth, according to Bagenal.
But Juno didn’t need to be in orbit around Jupiter to gather the plasma data.
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Auroras are caused when charged particles from the solar wind come into contact with the upper atmosphere, exciting and ionizing the magnetosphere and causing protons to emit colorful light as they gain electrons from the atmosphere.
