Page 16 September 14, 2017 EL SEGUNDO HERALD
Looking Up
Jupiter’s Aurora Presents a Powerful Mystery
Based on Press Release from JPL,
Provided by Bob Eklund
Scientists on NASA’s Juno mission have
observed massive amounts of energy swirling
over Jupiter’s polar regions that contribute to
the giant planet’s powerful aurora—only not
in ways the researchers expected.
Examining data collected by the ultraviolet
spectrograph and energetic-particle detector
instruments aboard the Jupiter-orbiting
Juno spacecraft, a team led by Barry Mauk
of the Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland,
observed signatures of powerful electric
potentials, aligned with Jupiter’s magnetic
field, that accelerate electrons toward
the Jovian atmosphere at energies up to
400,000 electron volts. This is 10 to 30
times higher than the largest auroral potentials
observed at Earth, where only several
thousands of volts are typically needed to
generate the most intense aurora—known
as discrete aurora—the dazzling, twisting,
snake-like northern and southern lights seen
in places like Alaska and Canada, northern
Europe, and many other northern and southern
polar regions.
Jupiter has the most powerful aurora in the
solar system, so the team was not surprised
that electric potentials play a role in their
generation. What’s puzzling the researchers,
Mauk said, is that despite the magnitudes of
these potentials at Jupiter, they are observed
only sometimes and are not the source of the
most intense auroras, as they are at Earth.
“At Jupiter, the brightest auroras are caused
by some kind of turbulent acceleration process
that we do not understand very well,” said
Mauk, who leads the investigation team for the
APL-built Jupiter Energetic Particle Detector
Instrument (JEDI). “There are hints in our
latest data indicating that as the power density
of the auroral generation becomes stronger
and stronger, the process becomes unstable
and a new acceleration process takes over.
But we’ll have to keep looking at the data.”
Scientists consider Jupiter to be a physics
lab of sorts for worlds beyond our solar system,
saying the ability of Jupiter to accelerate
charged particles to immense energies has
implications for how more distant astrophysical
systems accelerate particles. But what they
learn about the forces driving Jupiter’s aurora
and shaping its space weather environment
also has practical implications in our own
planetary backyard.
“The highest energies that we are observing
within Jupiter’s auroral regions are formidable.
These energetic particles that create the aurora
are part of the story in understanding Jupiter’s
radiation belts, which pose such a challenge
to Juno and to upcoming spacecraft missions
to Jupiter under development,” said Mauk.
“Engineering around the debilitating effects
of radiation has always been a challenge to
spacecraft engineers for missions at Earth and
elsewhere in the solar system. What we learn
here, and from spacecraft like NASA’s Van
Allen Probes and Magnetospheric Multiscale
mission (MMS) that are exploring Earth’s
magnetosphere, will teach us a lot about
space weather and protecting spacecraft
and astronauts in harsh space environments.
Comparing the processes at Jupiter and Earth
is incredibly valuable in testing our ideas of
how planetary physics works.”
Mauk and colleagues present their findings
in the September 7 issue of the journal Nature.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
California, manages the Juno mission
for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton,
of the Southwest Research Institute in San
Antonio. Juno is part of NASA’s New Frontiers
Program, which is managed at NASA’s
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville,
Alabama, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
Lockheed Martin Space Systems,
Denver, built the spacecraft. •
This is a reconstructed view of Jupiter’s northern lights through the filters of the Juno Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument
on December 11, 2016, as the Juno spacecraft approached Jupiter, passed over its poles, and plunged towards the equator. Image
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Bertrand Bonfond.
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