Egypt – NASA detects strange flashes of light on Jupiter

(MENAFN – Youm7) A team of NASA scientists have detected strange flashes of light in the upper part of Jupiter’s atmosphere, and these phenomena are known as transient light events, and they have never been seen on other planets, but scientists have detected similar lightning strikes caused by thunderstorms on Earth, and they were caused by releases of electricity into the upper atmosphere.

Scientists have already assumed their presence in the atmosphere of Jupiter, which is distinguished by its massive and turbulent nature, and since 2016, NASA’s small probe Juno has been circling the gas giant and collecting data, and thanks to a UV spectrophotometer installed on the probe, the NASA team was able to prove the presence of the flashes, and the discovery was documented in an article recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Plants.

“The spectroscope tool was designed to characterize the lights of the planet’s north and south poles. Thanks to it, we took pictures of the Northern Lights, as well as a bright flash of ultraviolet radiation that we hadn’t expected.” said Rohini Giles, a scientist with the Juno probe and lead author of the research.

“And after carefully examining these lightning bolts, we concluded that the Juno probe had detected light events passing over Jupiter.”

These flashes represent transient light events that we also see on Earth. According to the scientist, we are witnessing this either in the form of “lightning sprites”, which are large-scale electrical charges that occur during thunderstorms, or in the form of light emissions and orbital disturbances at very low levels. frequency resulting from sources of electromagnetic pulses, They appear as huge halos of light 100 km above thunderstorms, and appear red due to the interaction with nitrogen in the upper atmosphere.

However, these exceptional events appear on other planets in different ways: on Jupiter, the atmosphere is mainly composed of hydrogen, which makes the events blue or pink.

Rohini said: “Now that we have observed the events on Jupiter, it will be easier for us to monitor them on other planets, to compare them with what is happening on Earth, which helps us better understand electrical activities. in other shells. “

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