NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Captures Mysterious Lightning Glow On Jupiter

One of NASA’s spacecraft caught a strange and surreal lightning glow inside a swirling vortex on Jupiter. On 16th June, NASA shared the photo of the mysterious green lightning bolt that have been captured in several vortices that accumulate near Jupiter's north pole.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Scientists are trying to unravel and understand facets of it, for instance, its aggressive storms and how lightning-like events unfold in the gas giant.

On Earth, lightning bolts emerge from water clouds and most of them hail near the equator. Whereas on Jupiter, the stickers originate from clouds that are the outcome of ammonia and water and emerge frequently near the poles.

In 2016, the Juno spacecraft was dispatched to observe Jupiter and its moons, capturing its 31st close flyby of the gas giant on 30th December 2020. The spacecraft took pictures of the cloud tops from approximately 19,900 miles away.

The final images were developed in 2022 by citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill. he used raw data from the JunoCam instrument of the spacecraft.

Juno’s ongoing investigation will aid the scientist in precisely grasping a greater understanding of the planet and its unidentified characteristics.

Juno's orbit around Jupiter is edging closer to the planet, to ensure that the spacecraft passes its nightside in subsequent months. This will enhance the possibility to capture lightning on the gas giant.

Matthew Johnson, project manager for the Juno mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, stated that “As well as continuously changing our orbit to allow new perspectives of Jupiter and flying low over the nightside of the planet, the spacecraft will also be threading the needle between some of Jupiter’s rings to learn more about their origin and composition.”

Juno is well equipped with several instruments that can generate detections underneath the thick cloud blanket in Jupiter to gather data on the planet’s weather phenomena, atmosphere and origin. More than 50 flybys have been conducted by the spacecraft on Jupiter and made close passes by three of its largest moons, including the icy ocean worlds of Europa and Ganymede, and Io, the most volcanically active location in our solar system.

the Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Scott Bolton, asserted that “Our upcoming flybys in July and October will bring us even closer, leading up to our twin flyby encounters with Io in December of this year and February of next year when we fly within 1,500 kilometers of its surface. All of these flybys are providing spectacular views of the volcanic activity of this amazing moon. The data should be amazing.”

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