Mystery behind Jupiter’s spectacular X-ray auroras revealed, Nasa shares intriguing post
“Jupiter has the most powerful auroras in the solar system, and is the only one of the four giant planets with an aurora that has been found to emit X-rays,” reads a part of the post shared by Nasa.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) often takes to Instagram to share interesting and intriguing posts about our neighbouring planets. Case in point, their latest post revealing the mystery behind Jupiter’s X-ray auroras. The post has now intrigued people. There is a possibility it will amaze you too.
Nasa wrote that the answer to the mystery of what causes X-ray auroras on Jupiter is the ions "surfing" electromagnetic waves. In the next few lines, they also shared more about this interesting phenomenon in detail.
“Jupiter has the most powerful auroras in the solar system, and is the only one of the four giant planets with an aurora that has been found to emit X-rays. Planetary astronomers knew the auroras are triggered by ions crashing into Jupiter’s atmosphere. Now, they have learned how the ions responsible for the X-ray light show are able to get to the atmosphere,” Nasa shared.
The space agency added that this “40-year-old mystery” was solved by scientists by combining data from European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton mission and Nasa’s Juno Spacecraft. “For the first time, they have seen the entire mechanism at work: The electrically charged atoms, or ions, responsible for the X-rays are “surfing” electromagnetic waves in Jupiter’s magnetic field, down into the gas giant’s atmosphere,” they added.
The post is complete with an image that shows purple hues around the planet. In the post, Nasa explained that the image is created by overlying the hues detected by Chandra X-ray Observatory in 2007 on an image of Jupiter taken by Hubble Space Telescope.
Take a look at the post here:
The post, since being shared by Nasa some eight hours ago, has already gathered more than 5.2 lakh likes and the numbers are quickly increasing. It has also accumulated tons of comments from people.
“Wow, this is amazing,” wrote an Instagram user. “OMG!!” shared another. “How pretty,” expressed a third.
What are your thoughts on the share about Jupiter by Nasa?
