NASA's Juno spacecraft has revealed the origins of Jupiter's spectacular auroral dawn storms, for the first time.
Before Juno, observations of the aurora were done partially by ground-based and Earth-orbiting observatories, notably NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Juno's data, scientists say is a game-changer, since it offers a better understanding of the planet's nightside, where the storms originate.
Researchers have concluded that as Jupiter rotates, this storm rotates along with it from the nightside to the dayside, where the auroral features become brighter, emitting hundreds and thousands of gigawatts of UV light into space.