Heating caused by solar winds on Jupiter extends into its stratosphere, new observations reveal

Within a day of the solar wind hitting Jupiter, temperatures on the planet increase sharply

New observations made by scientists using the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii reveal that auroras appearing at Jupiter's poles heat the planet's atmosphere to a greater depth than earlier believed.

An aurora, or a polar light, is a natural electrical phenomenon, which is also observed on Earth's sky, specifically near the northern and southern magnetic poles. Auroras occur as a result of interaction between the solar winds and gases in Earth's upper atmosphere (magnetosphere).

Auroras are characterised by the appearance of streamers of green, red, blue or yellow light in the sky. Auroras occurring at Earth's North Pole are known as aurora borealis, while those happening at the South Pole are called aurora australis.

Auroras can appear in different forms, but tend to stretch from east to west, across both horizons.

According to scientists, the same phenomena happen on Jupiter as well.

The Voyager I probe was the first mission to observe the auroras on Jupiter back in 1979. By the 1990s, scientists realised that auroras on Jupiter were actually much bigger than first believed. The images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope revealed that the emanating lights on the gaseous planet were thousands of times brighter than initially thought.

In the current study, the team used the Cooled Mid-Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (COMICS) instrument installed on the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii to observe the heating and chemical reactions occurring on the gaseous giant.

The researchers found that the heating caused by solar winds on Jupiter extends into the stratosphere of Jupiter's atmosphere, meaning that the heating on Jupiter goes two or three times deeper down into its atmosphere than on Earth.

The team also observed that within a day of the solar wind hitting Jupiter, temperatures on the planet increased sharply. Changes in the atmospheric chemistry of the planet were also observed.

"The solar wind impact at Jupiter is an extreme example of space weather," said James Sinclair, the lead researcher from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"We're seeing the solar wind having an effect deeper than is normally seen."

The team hopes these observations can help shed new light on the evolution of planets and to help them learn more about the atmosphere of planets with harsh environments.

The detailed findings of the study are published in journal Nature Astronomy.

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