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New observations made with the Subaru telescope, an 8-meter Japanese telescope at Mauna Kea in Hawaii, show that Jupiter's aurorae warm up the gas giant's atmosphere to a greater depth than expected – and that This is a quick response to the problem. solar wind.
This infrared image was recorded by the Subaru Telescope COMICS instrument. Sinclair and his collaborators used red, blue and yellow to infuse this image; the more yellow and red regions of the atmosphere indicate the hottest areas. This highlights the auroral warming that occurs at the Jupiter poles, where solar wind and magnetosphere energy is deposited. This image was captured on January 12, 2017. Image credit: NAOJ / NASA / JPL-Caltech.
The aurorae at the Earth's poles occur when the energy particles emitted by the Sun – the solar wind – interact with the gases in the upper atmosphere and warm them up.
The same thing happens in Jupiter, but new observations show that global warming is 2 to 3 times deeper than on Earth, down to the lower Jupiter stratosphere (upper atmosphere).
It is essential to understand the constant interaction of solar wind solar collapse with planetary environments to better understand the very nature of how planets and their atmospheres evolve.
"The impact of the solar wind at Jupiter is an extreme example of space weather," said Dr. James Sinclair, a researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"We see the solar wind having a deeper effect than what we normally see."
Dr. Sinclair and his colleagues analyzed images of the cooled camera and spectographe (COMICS) on the Subaru telescope.
"What is surprising in the results is that we were able to associate for the first time the variations of the solar wind and the response in the stratosphere – and that the response to these variations is so fast for such a large area" said Dr. Glenn Orton, also from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
A day after the solar wind hit Jupiter, the chemistry of its atmosphere changed and its temperature increased, astronomers discovered.
"Such thermal and chemical reactions can tell us more about other planets with harsh environments, and even on ancient lands," said Dr. Yasumasa Kasaba, of Tohoku University.
The results appear in the log Nature Astronomy.
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J.A. Sinclair et al. A lightening of the emission of 7.8 μm of Jupiter's auroral CH4 during compression by the solar wind. Nature Astronomy, published online April 8, 2019; doi: 10.1038 / s41550-019-0743-x
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