NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captures new details of Auroras on the largest planet in the solar system. The dance lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth. With Weber's advanced sensitivity, astronomers have studied this phenomenon to better understand Jupiter's magnetosphere.
Aurora is generated when high-energy particles enter the planetary atmosphere near the magnetic pole and collide with atoms or gas molecules. On Earth, these are called Northern Lights and Southern Light. The aurora on Jupiter is not only huge in size, but is hundreds of times larger than the aurora in the atmosphere of the earth. The Earth’s aurora is caused by solar storms – when the sun falls from the sun to the upper atmosphere rains, the gases are vibrant and make them glow in the shades of red, green and purple.
Jupiter also has an additional source of its aurora: the strong magnetic field of the gas giant grabs charged particles from its surroundings. This includes not only charged particles in the solar wind, but also particles thrown into space through its orbital moon IO, known for its numerous and large volcanoes. IO's volcanic ejection particles, which escape the moon's gravity and orbit Jupiter. The bouncing of charged particles released by the sun also reaches the planet. Jupiter's large and powerful magnetic field captures all charged particles and accelerates them to huge speeds. These fast particles pierce into the Earth's atmosphere with high energy, which stimulates the gas and causes it to glow.
Now Weber's unique features are providing new insights into the aurora on Jupiter. The sensitivity of the telescope allows astronomers to capture rapidly changing aurora characteristics. On December 25, 2023, new data was captured by Webber's Nircam (near infrared camera) and a team of scientists led by Jonathan Nichols of the University of Leicester in the UK.
"What is that Christmas present-it blows me away!" Share Nichols. "We wanted to see how fast the aurora changes, expecting them to fade away, perhaps more than a quarter of an hour or so. Instead, we observed the entire aurora area hoarse and popping light, sometimes changing the second."
In particular, the team studied the emission of trihydrogen cations (h3+), can be created in Auroras. They found that this emissions were much more than previously thought. These observations will help develop scientists’ understanding of how Jupiter heats and cools.
The team also found some unexplained observations in the data.
"To make these observations even more special, we also used NASA's Hubble Space telescope to take photos simultaneously in Ultraviolet," Nichols added. "It's strange that the brightest light that Webber observed has no real counterpart in Hubble's photos. This makes us scratch our heads. To bring together the brightness that both Webber and Hubble saw together, we need to have a large number of low-energy particles that were combined, which had previously been considered impossible to understand.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2T8LPD4III[/embed]
The team now plans to study this difference between Hubble and Weber data and explore the broader impact on Jupiter's atmosphere and space environment. They also intend to follow up on the study with more Webb observations, which they can compare with NASA's Juno spacecraft data to better explore the causes of the mysterious bright launch.
These results are published today in the journal Nature Communications.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world's leading space science observatory. Weber is solving the mysteries in our solar system, transcending the distant world around other stars, and exploring the mysterious structure and origin of our universe and where we are. Weber is an international program of NASA and its partners ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Space Canada).
To learn more about Webb, visit:
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View/Download all image products on all resolutions For this article by the Institute of Space Telescope Science.
View/download research results From the Diary Natural Communications.
Laura Betz -laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
Bethany Downer -Bethany.downer@esawebb.org
ESA/Webb, Baltimore, MD.
Christine Chicken -cpulliam@stsci.edu
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD.
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