Rare: Juno probe captured green lightning at Jupiter's north pole for the first time
CTOnews.com, June 20 (Xinhua)-- NASA's Juno space probe captured green lightning above a whirlpool near Jupiter's north pole, the first time humans have observed this wonderful phenomenon on the largest planet in the solar system.
Juno launched in 2011 and arrived in orbit around Jupiter in 2016. So far, it has collected more scientific data about Jupiter than 375GB. In this photo captured by public camera data on the Juno probe, we can see a flash of lightning glowing green above a whirlpool near Jupiter's north pole.
On Earth, lightning is produced by water clouds and is most common near the equator. On Jupiter, lightning may also occur in clouds containing ammonia solutions, most commonly near the poles. Juno will fly over the night side of Jupiter several times in the coming months, which will provide more opportunities for various scientific instruments on the probe to capture lightning.
Juno captured the scene during its 31st close flyby of Jupiter on December 30, 2020, and public scientist Kevin Kevin M Gill processed the image using raw data from Juno's camera (JunoCam) in 2022. When the original image was taken, the Juno probe was about 19900 miles from the top of Jupiter's clouds (CTOnews.com Note: about 32025.95 kilometers) and latitude was about 78 degrees.
The Juno probe conducted 35 flights around Jupiter during its main mission, collecting more than 3Tb (non-TB, about 375GB) scientific data and providing amazing views of Jupiter and its moons, which were processed by public scientists using Nasa's first camera dedicated to publicity. The discovery of Juno has also changed our understanding of Jupiter and the formation of the solar system.
On August 5, 2011, Juno began a five-year mission to explore beneath Jupiter's dense clouds and answer questions about the origin and evolution of giant planets in Jupiter, our solar system and the universe as a whole. On July 4, 2016, after a five-year, 1.7 billion-mile (2.7 billion km) journey, Juno reached Jupiter and entered a 53 celestial orbit extending from the top of Jupiter's clouds to the magnetosphere of the giant planet.
