Jupiter’s Spectacular Ultraviolet “Dawn Storm” Auroras Are Surprisingly Earth-Like

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Ultraviolet Polar Aurorae on Jupiter and Earth

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Even if Jupiter’s size is 10 times bigger than the Earth’s, this illustration reveals the resemblances in between the 2 sort of aurora. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/UVS/STScI/MODIS/WIC/IMAGE/ULiège/Bonfond

A brand-new research study tracks the life process of the incredible ultraviolet storms in the huge world’s aurora, created by charged particles from its volcanic moon, Io.

The storms, which include brightenings and broadenings of the dawn flank of an oval of auroral activity that surrounds Jupiter’s poles, develop in a pattern remarkably similar to familiar rises in the aurora that swell throughout Earth’s polar skies, called auroral substorms, according to the authors.

The brand-new research study is the very first to track the storms from their birth on the nightside of the huge world through their complete development. It was released on March 16, 2021, in AGU Advances, AGU’s journal for high-impact, short-format reports with instant ramifications covering all Earth and area sciences.

During a dawn storm, Jupiter’s peaceful and routine auroral arc changes into a complex and extremely intense auroral function. It gives off hundreds to countless Gigawatts of ultraviolet light into area as it turns from the night side to the dawn side and eventually to the day side of the world throughout 5-10 hours. A Gigawatt is the power produced by a normal modern-day atomic power plant. This gigantic brightness indicates that a minimum of 10 times more energy was moved from the magnetosphere to the upper environment of Jupiter.

Evolution of a Dawn Storm in Jupiter's Polar Auroras

These observations originate from the Juno’s UVS (Ultraviolet Spectrograph) instrument. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/UVS/ULiège/Bonfond

Previously, dawn storms had actually just been observed from ground-based telescopes on Earth or the Hubble Space Telescope, which can just provide profiles of the aurora and cannot see the night side of the world. Juno focuses on Jupiter every 53 days along an extremely lengthened orbit that brings it right above the poles every orbit.

“This is a real game changer,” stated Bertrand Bonfond, a scientist from the University of Liège and lead author of the brand-new research study. “We finally got to find out what was happening on the night side, where the dawn storms are born.”

Familiar auroral series, various engines Polar auroras on Earth and on Jupiter are pictures of procedures taking place in the electromagnetic fields that surround them. Both worlds create electromagnetic fields that record charged particles.

A research study carried out by scientists from the Laboratory for Planetary and Atmospheric Physics of the University of Liege, reveals for the very first time worldwide views of a dawn storm, a magnificent auroral phenomenon that takes place on Jupiter. Credit: University of Liège

Earth’s magnetosphere is formed by charged particles draining of the sun called the solar wind. Bursts of solar wind stretch Earth’s electromagnetic field into a long tail on the nightside of the world. When that tail snaps back, it fires charged particles into the nightside ionosphere, which look like incredible auroral light programs.

The brand-new research study discovered the timing of the dawn storms on Jupiter did not associate with solar wind variations. Jupiter’s magnetosphere is primarily occupied by particles getting away from its volcanic moon Io, which then get ionized and caught around the world by its electromagnetic field.

The sources of mass and energy essentially vary in between these 2 magnetospheres, causing auroras that normally look rather various. However, the dawn storms, as unwinded by Juno’s ultraviolet spectrograph, looked familiar to the scientists.

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

The substorms arise from the explosive reconfiguration of the tail of the magnetosphere. On Earth, they are highly associated to the variations of the solar wind and of the orientation of the interplanetary electromagnetic field. On Jupiter, such explosive reconfigurations are rather associated to an overspill of the plasma stemming from Io.

These findings show that, whatever their sources, particles and energy do not constantly flow efficiently in planetary magnetospheres. They frequently build up till the magnetospheres collapse and create substorm-like reactions in the planetary aurorae.

“Even if their engine is different, showing for the first time the link between these two very different systems allows us to identify the universal phenomena from the peculiarities specific to each planet,” Bonfond stated.

Read Dark Origins of One of Jupiter’s Grand Light Shows Revealed by NASA’s Juno Spacecraft for more on this research study.

Reference: “Are Dawn Storms Jupiter’s Auroral Substorms?” by B. Bonfond, Z. H. Yao, G. R. Gladstone, D. Grodent, J.-C. Gérard, J. Matar, B. Palmaerts, T. K. Greathouse, V. Hue, M. H. Versteeg, J. A. Kammer, R. S. Giles, C. Tao, M. F. Vogt, A. Mura, A. Adriani, B. H. Mauk, W. S. Kurth and S. J. Bolton, 16 March 2021, AGU Advances.
DOI: 10.1029/2020AV000275