![]() This process accelerates these molecules to fantastic speeds, imbuing them with enormous energy. It turns out that a good proportion of Io’s plasma contribution actually gets flung out to the farther reaches of Jupiter’s magnetosphere by the centrifugal force of the spinning gas giant, before being brought back to the planet. ![]() Jupiter’s magnetosphere actually stretches roughly three million kilometers toward the Sun, and it affects the solar wind far back. The rest of the charged sulfur particles stripped from Io are also collected by Jupiter’s magnetic field, but they take the long way around to the poles. ![]() However, that is only a small part of the picture. These particles create their own auroral phenomenon-a small point of light that is Io’s auroral ‘footprint’. Some of these charged particles from Io are then pulled directly down to Jupiter’s poles, where the curved lines of the magnetic fields converge. The magnetic field is strong enough to strip electrons from the sulfur molecules, making them charged. The first thing that Hisaki’s six-month monitoring revealed was that sulfur gas spewed out from Io’s volcanoes is caught up in a ‘tail’ created by the force of the solar wind pushing Jupiter’s enormous magnetic field into a windsock shape as the planet orbits. At the same time, Juno began its approach to Jupiter, travelling upstream of the solar wind, well positioned to measure the particles buffeting the gas giant. The team coordinated in mid-2016 to have the Hisaki satellite and the Hubble Space Telescope both turn their electronic eyes to Jupiter and its magnetosphere - where charged particles are controlled by the planet’s magnetic-field acting as a shield against solar wind. The study of Jupiter’s auroras was limited to observations from Earth-orbiting satellites until the arrival of NASA space probe Juno at Jupiter in July 2016.įinally able to look more closely into the auroras, Kimura led a team of planetary scientists from institutions all over the world, including Johns Hopkins University in the United States, Université de Liège in Belgium and the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. Kimura was working a four-month auroral imaging campaign on interactions in the region above Jupiter’s magnetic field, and, while intrigued, he needed a closer look underneath this plasma layer to unpick transient auroras. In 2014, the Japanese extreme-ultraviolet space telescope Hisaki observed a brightening of Jupiter’s aurora that lasted 3–11 hours during a period when the solar wind was relatively quiet. It was confusing if you looked at Earth’s model, says Kimura: “Sometimes aurora emission is highly correlated with the solar wind, but sometimes it’s not correlated with it at all.” When they reach Jupiter, the planet’s magnetic field guides these to the planet’s poles, where they create constant auroral lights.īut Jupiter’s auroras occasionally peak in brightness in events known as transient auroras - long a mystery to astronomers. The planet’s poles feature an auroral light display, which - as on Earth - is caused by solar wind, high-energy particles that escape the Sun’s gravity and shoot across the Solar System. Jupiter’s auroras are far more complex than Earth’s. In May 2017, an international team of researchers led by Tomoki Kimura of the Nishina Center for Accelerator‐Based Science at RIKEN used data generated by NASA space probe Juno to confirm that Io’s fiery volcanic activity contributes to auroral lights brightening Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. As a result, volcanoes on Io regularly throw vast quantities of molten material, dust and sulfur gas into the atmosphere. Trapped in an incessant gravitational tug-of-war between the gas giant Jupiter and its other moons, Io’s core is continuously kneaded by burning tidal forces. A high-speed atmospheric encounter on the return leg creates the Red Giant’s once mysterious transient auroras. NASA’s Juno spacecraft has helped explain how volcanoes on the moon Io spew particles that are flung out by Jupiter’s magnetic field, before rebounding back.
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