Scientists solve 40-year mystery over Jupiter's X-ray aurora
July 9, 2021
by University College London
A research team co-led by UCL has solved a decades-old mystery as to how Jupiter produces a spectacular burst of X-rays every few minutes.
The X-rays are part of Jupiter's aurora—bursts of visible and invisible light that occur when charged particles interact with the planet's atmosphere. A similar phenomenon occurs on Earth, creating the northern lights, but Jupiter's is much more powerful, releasing hundreds of gigawatts of energy, enough to briefly power all of human civilization.
In a new study, published in Science Advances, researchers combined close-up observations of Jupiter's environment by NASA's satellite Juno, which is currently orbiting the planet, with simultaneous X-ray measurements from the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton observatory (which is in Earth's own orbit).
