Close-ups of Jupiter’s poles show auroras, weather

After journeying for almost five years to our solar system’s largest planet, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back the first images of Jupiter’s north pole and the auroras rippling across its southern pole. The pictures have given scientists goose bumps.

Juno successfully executed the first of 36 orbital flybys on August 27 when the spacecraft came about 2,500 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter’s swirling clouds. The pictures, which came from Juno during its first flyby of the gas giant, the fifth planet from our Sun, with its instruments switched on, show weather activity and storm systems unlike anything we have so far detected on any of our solar system’s gas-giant planets.

As Juno’s camera revealed, Jupiter’s north pole is bluer than better-known areas of the planet, which are often dominated by red, orange and brown hues. Bolton said, “There is no sign of the latitudinal bands or zone and belts that we are used to; this image is hardly recognizable as Jupiter”. That’s a sign that those clouds might hover well above the planet’s other visible features. Studying the largest planet in the solar system may hold clues to understanding how Earth and the rest of the planets formed.

After careening through space for five years, NASA’s Juno spacecraft arrived at Jupiter on July 4 of this year.

Juno’s mission is not only about Jupiter’s north and south poles.

A montage of 10 JunoCam images as NASA’s Juno spacecraft made its closest approach on August 27, 2016, at 12:50 UTC. The probe noted down detailed measurements using its pack of eight science instruments. Saturn, for example, has a hexagon of clouds at its north pole.

Back in 1979, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft flew past Jupiter and its moons.

‘There is nothing on Jupiter that anywhere near resembles that.

“These first infrared views of Jupiter’s north and south poles are revealing warm and hot spots that have never been seen before”, said Dr Alberto Adriani, of the Istituto di Astrofisica E Planetologia Spaziali in Rome. They look smaller and more clustered, unlike the squalls in other parts of Jupiter that swirl at the boundaries between the planet’s stripes of moving fluid.

Juno wasn’t just snapping pictures. JIRAM (Jovian Infrared Mapper), which the Italian Space Agency supplied, obtained some spectacular images of Jupiter at its northern and southern polar regions in infrared wavelengths. Scientists also captured images of the planet’s southern aurora – dancing lights that also appear at the poles here on Earth.

“In order to do that we need to know about the interior structure of Jupiter and how the atmosphere works and the composition of Jupiter, and that’s what the goal of Juno is”.

But before anyone throws out the “a” word – aliens – it’s important to note that we have known about these radio emissions since the 1950s.

So is Jupiter talking to us? The north and south pole images of Jupiter can be seen below.

‘These emissions are the strongest in the solar system.

Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System.

‘Now we are going to try to figure out where the electrons come from that are generating them’.