New bizarre feature detected in Jupiter’s Northern Lights

A newly detected auroral feature on Jupiter bears a striking resemblance to expanding smoke rings, in a discovery made possible by NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

New research published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics describes faint ring-shaped auroral features on Jupiter, the largest of which is about 1,240 miles (2,000 km) in diameter. The rapidly expanding rings, or “circularly expanding UV emissions” in the words of the researchers, were clocked at speeds between 2 and 4.8 miles per second (3.3 and 7.7 km / s).

As on Earth, Jupiter’s auroral characteristics are related to charged particles in the magnetosphere.

“We believe these recently discovered weak ultraviolet characteristics originate millions of miles from Jupiter, near the border of the Jovian magnetosphere with the solar wind,” Vincent Hue, senior author of the article and planet specialist at the Southwest Research Institute, said in a declaration. “The solar wind is a supersonic flow of charged particles emitted by the Sun. When they reach Jupiter, they interact with its magnetosphere in ways that are not yet well understood. “

Jupiter’s magnetosphere, 20,000 times the force of Earth, is so strong that the gas giant can deflect incoming solar winds at distances of between 2 million. and 3 million kilometers. Thomas Greathouse, co-author of the new study and SWRI researcher, said the Jupiter Rapid The 10-hour rotation is largely responsible for the movement of charged particles in its magnetosphere, but “the role of the solar wind is still debated,” he said in the statement.

That’s what we know about the Hubble Space Telescope, but NASA’s Juno spacecraft allows for more intimate observations of the gas giant. Orbiting Jupiter since 2016 and thjoked with his ultraviolet spectrograph, Juno detected the rapidly expanding rings, which had not been seen until now.

The charged particles seem to emanate from the outer reaches of the magnetosphere. Bertrand Bonfond, co-author and astrophysicist at the University of Liège in Belgium, said that “the location of the high latitude rings indicates that the particles causing the emissions are coming from the distant Jovian magnetosphere, near its border with the solar wind ”, as he explained in the SWRI version.

The formation of wave characteristics, technically known as Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, could occur due to the interaction of Jovian plasma and solar winds; these instabilities occur in the presence of shear speeds, and it is a process similar to how winds above water trigger wave formation. In this case, however, the interaction produces beams of particles that travel along magnetic field lines, which in turn form the ring auroras, according to the SWRI statement.

That said, the authors don’t make big claims in their article as to the cause of the newly detected feature. This is something that will be the subject of future study.

The good news is that NASA has extended the Juno mission until 2025, which means planetary scientists have more time to study this planet. and its majestic Northern Lights.