NASA ’s Juno spacecraft has captured what looks like “ sprites ” or “ elves ” skylark in the standard atmosphere of Jupiter for the first time . Perhaps the king of planets has decided to join in the Halloween fun this year ?
The new results from Juno suggest these lightning - alike electrical outbursts occur in the upper reaches of Jupiter ’s riotous atm . It ’s the first time they have ever been observed on another planet , the Juno team reputation in theJournal of Geophysical Research : Planets .
On Earth , these lustrous jiffy are due to thunderstorm , with lightning smasher either creatingred tendril telephone “ sprites”orglowing phonograph recording cognize as “ extremely low frequency ” . It was suspect that these transient lucent events ( TLEs ) may hap on Jupiter , as it ’s well known to havelightning stormsof its own , but they had never been descry before now .
Last summertime , research worker using Juno ’s ultraviolet spectrograph instrument ( UVS ) to observeJupiter ’s auroraewere surprised to catch a bright minute streak of ultraviolet emission that go away just as quickly .
" UVS was contrive to qualify Jupiter ’s beautiful northerly and southerly lights,“saidRohini Giles , lead writer of the paper . " But we see UVS figure of speech that not only showed Jovian aurora , but also a lustrous flash of UV light over in the corner where it was n’t supposed to be . The more our team looked into it , the more we realized Juno may have detected a TLE on Jupiter . "
last for just millisecond , faery on Earth are actuate by lightning charge from thunderstorms rumbling around 100 kilometers ( 60 miles ) below and can stretch 50 kilometers ( 30 mile ) across , likegiant red sky jellyfish . extremely low frequency ( of necessity short for Emission of Light and Very Low - Frequency perturbations due to Electromagnetic Pulse Sources ) look as Brobdingnagian matt disks and can reach an unbelievable 320 km ( 200 miles ) across , but again are over in a flash .
look for back over datum from the last four age of the Juno military mission , the team found 11 smart event that they surmise are TLEs because they were observed in a region of Jupiter known to organise thunder and lightning and survive for just milliseconds . They ruled out the hypothesis these case were justmega - bolt of lightningbecause they were found 300 kilometer ( 186 miles ) above the pee clouds where Jupiter ’s lightning usually forms . The UVS also notice high hydrogen emission in the bright news bulletin .
" On ground , sprites and elves appear ruby in color due to their interaction with atomic number 7 in the upper atmospheric state , " say Giles . " But on Jupiter , the upper atmosphere mostly dwell of hydrogen , so they would likely come out either gamey or pink . "
Now that the investigator know what they are face for , it should be easier to discover them on Jupiter , and perhaps even other satellite that we know form lightning likeSaturnor exoplanetHAT - P-11b . Finding sprites and ELF on other mankind does n’t just think a galactic - all-embracing Halloween party , it ’s another step towards realise electric natural process in planetary atmospheres .
