In case the fireworks you were planning to attend are postponed by bad weather, we have a quick clip from NASA showing a light show of another kind: Auroras on Jupiter.
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As NASA’s Juno mission continues to hurl itself toward Jupiter, the terrifying reality of flying close to the biggest and baddest planet in our solar system is starting to set in.
Browse through the cool photos, animations and diagrams in Gizmodo’s Image Cache here. They have been studied so intensively over the past few decades that “Jovian space weather scientist” has become a bonafide sub-discipline of astronomy.
Scientists can now utilize the images provided by the Hubble to create a video that can clearly highlight the exact movement of the auroras on Jupiter. Now, astronomers have focused on another attractive feature of the planet, using the ultraviolet capabilities of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The timing of this observational campaign is no accident.
Unlike auroras here, which are caused by solar storms, Jupiter pulls charged particles from its surroundings, including solar winds and even the volcanos on Io, one of its moons and the most volcanically active world in the solar system.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft obtained this color view on June 28, 2016, at a distance of 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) from Jupiter.
An artist’s impression shows a unique type of exoplanet discovered with the Hubble Space Telescope. Jupiter’s magnetic field is 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s – pretty much the largest structure in the solar system. They stretch across a swath of Jupiter almost three times larger than Earth, according to Bagenal. The Juno spacecraft managed to pass through Jupiter’s “bow shock” before getting closer to the planet. Science instruments on board detected changes in the particles and fields around the spacecraft as it passed from an environment dominated by the interplanetary solar wind into Jupiter’s magnetosphere.
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Experts said the Waves instrument will sample the electric and magnetic fields of radio and plasma waves around Jupiter to determine how the planet’s auroras are produced.
