Auroras on Jupiter

Astronomers are using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study auroras – stunning light shows in a planet's atmosphere – on the poles of the largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter.

The auroras were photographed during a series of Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph far-ultraviolet-light observations taking place as NASA's Juno spacecraft approaches and enters into orbit around Jupiter. The aim of the program is to determine how Jupiter's auroras respond to changing conditions in the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted from the sun.

Auroras are formed when charged particles in the space surrounding the planet are accelerated to high energies along the planet's magnetic field. When the particles hit the atmosphere near the magnetic poles, they cause it to glow like gases in a fluorescent light fixture. Jupiter's magnetosphere is 20,000 times stronger than Earth's. These observations will reveal how the solar system's largest and most powerful magnetosphere behaves.

The full-color disk of Jupiter in this image was separately photographed at a different time by Hubble's Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, a long-term Hubble project that annually captures global maps of the outer planets.

About the colours

This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the STIS and WFC3/UVIS instruments. Several filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: STIS CCD Blue: WFC3/UVIS F395N (395 nm) Green: WFC3/UVIS F502N (502 nm) Red: WFC3/UVIS F631N (631 nm)

About the data

The data are from the following HST proposals: 2014 WFC3/UVIS Data: 13631 PI: A. Simon (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), G. Orton (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory), J. Rogers (University of Cambridge, UK), and M. Wong and I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley) 2016 STIS Data: 14105 PI: J. Nichols (University of Leicester), J. Clarke (Boston University), G. Orton (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), S. Cowley, E. Bunce, and T. Stallard (University of Leicester), S. Badman (Lancaster University), D. Grodent, B. Bonfond, and A. Radioti (Universite de Liege), R. Gladstone (Southwest Research Institute), F. Bagenal (University of Colorado, Boulder), J. Connerney (NASA/GSFC), D. McComas (Princeton University), B. Mauk (JHU/APL), W. Kurth (University of Iowa), I. Yoshikawa (University of Tokyo), M. Fujimoto (ISAS, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), C. Tao (NICT, Japan), and T. Kimura (ISAS, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).