Jovian light show rules

This illustration depicts ultraviolet polar aurorae on Jupiter and Earth. While the diameter of the Jovian world is 10 times larger than that of Earth, both planets have markedly similar aurora.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/UVS/STScI/MODIS/WIC/IMAGE/ULiège

Juno comes through yet again, this time showing how Jovian auroras closely resembles earth's.

New results from the Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA’s Juno mission reveal for the first time the birth of auroral dawn storms – the early morning brightening unique to Jupiter’s spectacular aurorae. These immense, transient displays of light occur at both Jovian poles and had previously been observed only by ground-based and Earth-orbiting observatories, notably NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Results of this study were published March 16 in the journal AGU Advances.

Seen below is the aurora happening in real time.

A study conducted by researchers from the Laboratory for Planetary and Atmospheric Physics of the University of Liege, shows for the first time global views of a dawn storm, a spectacular auroral phenomenon that occurs on Jupiter. Credit: University of Liège

This video clip depicts the evolution of a dawn storm in Jupiter’s polar aurorae. The imagery for the video was collected using data from the from the Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

Researchers found dawn storms are born on the nightside of the gas giant. As the planet rotates, the soon-to-be dawn storm rotates with it into the dayside, where these complex and intensely bright auroral features grow even more luminous, emitting anywhere from hundreds to thousands of gigawatts of ultraviolet light into space. The jump in brightness implies that dawn storms are dumping at least 10 times more energy into Jupiter's upper atmosphere than typical aurora.

“When we looked at the whole dawn storm sequence, we couldn’t help but notice that they are very similar to a type of terrestrial auroras called substorms,” said Zhonghua Yao, co-author of the study at the University of Liège.

As per the title, the Jovian light show rules. :)