Nasa reveals 40-year-old mystery behind Jupiter’s X-ray auroras; shares intriguing post

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) frequently shares unusual and fascinating posts on its Instagram handles. Their most recent post aims to shed light on the mystery surrounding Jupiter's X-ray auroras. The post has piqued people's interest prompting a variety of reactions from them.

The ions "surfing" electromagnetic waves are the answer to the enigma of what creates X-ray auroras on Jupiter, according to Nasa. They also went into greater detail regarding this fascinating phenomenon, Here's a look at the post:

“Jupiter has the most powerful auroras in the solar system and is the only one of the four giant planets with an aurora that has been found to emit X-rays. Planetary astronomers knew the auroras are triggered by ions crashing into Jupiter’s atmosphere. Now, they have learned how the ions responsible for the X-ray light show are able to get to the atmosphere,” Nasa wrote in the caption.

40-year-old mystery solved

Scientists solved this "40-year-old mystery" by merging data from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton mission and Nasa's Juno spacecraft, according to the space agency. “For the first time, they have seen the entire mechanism at work: The electrically charged atoms or ions, responsible for the X-rays are “surfing” electromagnetic waves in Jupiter’s magnetic field, down into the gas giant’s atmosphere,” they stated.

The post is accompanied by an image depicting purple colors all over the globe. Nasa noted in the article that the image was made by superimposing the hues observed by Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2007 on a Hubble Space Telescope photograph of Jupiter.

Netizens' Reaction

Since Nasa shared the tweet eight hours ago, it has already received over 5.2 lakh likes, and the figure is rapidly growing. It has also garnered a large number of comments. “Wow, this is amazing,” an Instagram user commented. “OMG!!” wrote another user. “How pretty,” expressed the third person.