NASA ’s Webb space telescope has captured haunt raw views of Jupiter ’s auroral display , unveil the bright light show in exquisite , never - before - seen detail . Using the scope ’s most late observations of the gas giant , scientists unveil a curious discrepancy between how Jupiter ’s auroras appear to Webb versus Hubble .
Webb ’s NIRCam ( Near - Infrared Camera ) zoomed into Jupiter ’s Pole to capture the planet ’s tight - varying aurorean features , which are 100 time promising than the ones seen on Earth .
“ We wanted to see how quickly the auroras change , expect them to fade in and out ponderously , perhaps over a quarter of an 60 minutes or so , ” Jonathan Nichols , a researcher at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom , and top generator of a newpaperpublished in the journal Nature Communications , said in astatement . “ Instead , we observed the whole aurorean region fizzing and popping with promiscuous , sometimes depart by the 2d . ”
The image on the right shows the planet Jupiter to indicate the location of the observed auroras, which was originally published in 2023.Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ricardo Hueso (UPV), Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley), Thierry Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), Leigh Fletcher (University of Leicester), Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley), Joseph DePasquale (STScI), Jonathan Nichols (University of Leicester), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb).
On Earth , aurora take place when energetic particles from the Sun interact with the major planet ’s magnetised field and its atmosphere , creating shimmering displays of light across the skies known as the Northern and Southern Lights . away from the Sun ’s particles , Jupiter has an additional source that creates its auroras . Jupiter ’s hard charismatic field grabs charged speck from its environment and accelerates them to gamey speed . These speedy particle , some of which are drop into space by Jupiter ’s orbiting moon Io , gibe into the satellite ’s atmosphere at high vim and excite the gas , get it to glow .
Using Webb ’s recent observations of Jupiter ’s aurora , the scientists studied emissions from a corpuscle called trihydrogen cation . The special mote is formed when energetic particles rive an negatron off of a hydrogen molecule , and that molecule then reacts with other atomic number 1 molecules . The subject found that the trihydrogen cation emissions are far more variable than they antecedently believe . infer the behavior of the special molecule aid scientists well understand how Jupiter ’s atmospheric state cools and estrus .
The scientist also took images of Jupiter ’s auroras with NASA ’s Hubble Space Telescope at the same time Webb made its observation , capturing them in ultraviolet light . They unveil a strange discrepancy between the two sets of data point , the bright lightness keep by Webb had no real counterpart in the Hubble images .
The dancing lights observed on Jupiter are hundreds of times brighter than those seen on Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jonathan Nichols (University of Leicester), Mahdi Zamani (ESA/Webb)
“ This has left us scratching our head , ” Nichols said . “ In rescript to stimulate the combination of brightness seen by both Webb and Hubble , we need to have a combining of gamey measure of very low - vim corpuscle polish off the ambience , which was previously think to be impossible . We still do n’t read how this happen . ”
The team contrive on hold out keep up - up watching of Jupiter ’s break of the day using Webb and equate them to data pick up by the on-going Juno mission . The space vehicle has been orbiting the gas giant since 2016 , catch Jupiter and its moons in exquisite detail . Webb previouslycaptured figure of Jupiter ’s glow dawning at its Second Earl of Guilford and south rod , providing scientists with a new linear perspective of the satellite ’s weak show in infrared wavelengths .
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