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In European mythology, sprites are intelligent, fairy-tale creatures. In science, they are bright light centers that are triggered by lightning and occur far above thunderstorms.
Although the light from the sprites that illuminate the sky can extend up to 60km in diameter, these glows only last milliseconds. The shape of these flashes, like a jellyfish, extends both up and down to the ground.
“On Earth, spirits and elves appear reddish in color due to their interaction with nitrogen in the upper atmosphere,” study lead author and planetary scientist Juno Rohini S. Giles said in a statement.
“But on Jupiter, the upper atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen, so they would probably appear blue or pink.”
The study was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
Although scientists predicted that Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere and massive storms could support the presence of these bright events, they had never been observed.
The Juno mission entered orbit around Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, in 2016.
Since then, it has helped rewrite much of what scientists previously understood about Jupiter.
So far, Juno has conducted 29 scientific flybys of Jupiter with his instruments and collecting data on the planet.
Among the spacecraft’s instruments is an ultraviolet spectrograph, or UVS, which captures Jupiter’s auroras in ultraviolet light.
But Juno’s team also believes the tool captured evidence of goblins and elves in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. The researchers spotted a bright flash disappearing in ultraviolet data during the summer of 2019.
“UVS was designed to feature Jupiter’s beautiful northern and southern lights,” said Giles, a postdoctoral researcher at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
“But we discovered UVS images that not only showed the Jovian aurora, but also a bright flash of UV light in the corner it shouldn’t have been. The more our team looked at them, the more we realized that Juno might have. detected at (transient light event) on Jupiter “.
Juno has so far captured 11 of these bright flashes that occur in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere in a region where intense lightning-filled thunderstorms form.
Jupiter is known for lightning bolts hundreds of times more powerful than any strike that occurs on Earth. But the researchers were able to determine that these flashes weren’t lightning because they were detected 400 km above the point where most of Jupiter’s lightning forms.
“We are continuing to look for more telltale signs of elves and goblins every time Juno makes a scientific pass,” Giles said.
“Now that we know what we’re looking for, it will be easier to find them on Jupiter and other planets. And comparing Jupiter’s sprites and elves to those here on Earth will help us better understand electrical activity in planetary atmospheres.”
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