Jupiter’s Spin Produces 10 Million Volts Around its Poles
Here is a stunning image taken in November 1998 with the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). It is an ultraviolet image of auroras over the north pole of Jupiter.
Image Credit: ESA
It turns out that the auroras on Jupiter are larger than our entire planet. Here’s a composite image of a Hubble image of Jupiter in visible light with an X-ray image from the Chandra X-Ray observatory, released yesterday:
Image Credit: NASA/Chandra
The auroras on Jupiter are hundreds of times more energetic than those seen on Earth. From this NASA press release:
The process begins with Jupiter’s spin: The giant planet turns on it axis once every 10 hours and drags its planetary magnetic field around with it. As any science hobbyist knows, spinning a magnet is a great way to generate a few volts—it’s the basic principle of DC motors. Jupiter’s spin produces 10 million volts around its poles.
“Jupiter’s polar regions are crackling with electricity,” says Gladstone, “and this sets the stage for non-stop auroras.”
Most of the charged particles that get caught up in the magnetic field come from the volcanoes on Io in the form of Sulfur and Oxygen ions. More particles interact with Jupiter from Io than from the Sun, although no one is entirely sure how the particles get from Io to Jupiter.
Somehow, these ions make their way to Jupiter’s poles where electric fields send them hurtling toward the planet below. Upon entering the atmosphere, “their electrons are first stripped away by molecules they run into, but as they slow down they start grabbing electrons back. The ‘charge exchange reaction’ produces intense X-ray auroras,”
I remember first hearing about these during the Voyager I days when an image on the night side of Jupiter showed the glowing particles. The fact that they appeared at shorter wavelength, like ultraviolet and X-rays, is an indication of their intense power compared to the ones we have here on Earth.
Technorati Tags: astronomy, jupiter auroras, NASA
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