NASA's Juno spacecraft reveals secrets of Jupiter's mysterious auroral storms

Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system and is known for its large massive auroral storms. Juno, NASA's spacecraft that was orbiting the planet Jupiter may have discovered the secret behind the origins of these massive storms, as NASA has revealed in a study. Read on to know more about the origins of Jupiter's dust storms. 

NASA Reveals the Secret Behind Jupiter's Dust Storm

NASA has published the new report in the AGU Advances talking about Jupiter's dust storms. In their report, they have revealed how for the first time their Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument aboard the Juno spaceship recorded the birth of an auroral dust storm. These observations were also observed and recorded by Earth-based observatories, like NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Results of the study were published on March 26 in AGU Advances. 

As reported by phys.org, this phenomenon was first discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope's Faint Object Camera in 1994. These auroral dawn storms consist of short-lived but intense brightening of Jupiter's main auroral oval. The auroral oval is a long oval curtain of light that surrounds both the poles of Jupiter. Before Juno, scientists were only able to observe one side of the planet's auroral phenomenon. Juno has helped scientists record and observe the auroral phenomenon on both poles of the planet. 

Bertrand Bonfond, the lead author of the study said in the report that observing Jupiter's aurora from Earth does not allow you to see beyond the limb, into the nightside of Jupiter's poles. Explorations by other spacecraft like Voyager, Galileo, Cassini happened from relatively large distances and did not fly over the poles, so they could not see the complete picture. He also added that this is why the Juno data is a real game-changer, allowing us a better understanding of what is happening on the nightside, where the dawn storms are born.

Researches in the study reported that these auroral dawn storms are born on the nightside of Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system. As the planet rotates, these developing dawn storms rotate along with it into the dayside of the planet, where this complex auroral phenomenon grows very brightly. In their report, NASA has states that these auroral storms produce anywhere from hundreds to thousands of gigawatts of ultraviolet light into space. The dawn storms project more than 10 times the energy into Jupiter's atmosphere than any other typical storm on Jupiter. Stay tuned for more updates on Space and technology.