FP TrendingFeb 25, 2021 16:05:11 IST
Using NASA’s Juno spacecraft to observe Jupiter’s auroras, researchers were able to see a very clear meteoroid explosion last year. The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) team at the Southwest Research Institute say they have captured a bolide – a super-bright meteoroid explosion in Jupiter’s high atmosphere. A. recitation The Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) said lead author Dr Rohini Giles says Jupiter experiences many side effects each year, leaving the effects themselves not uncommon. However, they are so short-lived that it is relatively unusual to see them.
Jupiter, as it looks like the Juno spaceship. Image courtesy of NASA
According to Giles, only larger impacts can be seen from Earth, and one must be extremely lucky to point a telescope at Jupiter at the right time. In the last twenty years, amateur astronomers have captured six influences on Jupiter, according to Giles. The new observation by SwRI researchers is from a tiny picture in time, for just 17 milliseconds and researchers do not know what happened to the bright flash outside of that time.
“But we know we didn’t see him on an earlier spin or on a later spin, so it must have been very short-lived,” Giles said. Researchers conclude that the flash was not a Luminous Transient Event (TLE) – optical events in the lowest stratospheric and mesospheric / ionospheric heights lasting just for 1 to 2 milliseconds , and are directly related to the electrical activity in hurricanes.
The area designed with Juno’s UVS instrument on April 10, 2020 shows a massive meteoroid exploding in a bright ball of fire in Jupiter’s high atmosphere. The UVS swath includes a piece of Jupiter’s northern auroral egg, appearing just in green, representing hydrogen emissions. In contrast, the bright spot appears mostly yellow, showing large scattering at longer waves. Image: SwRI / NASA
However, the length and shape of the flash spectrum matches well with what scientists expected from impact. The intense energy stood out in the data, as it had very different celestial properties than the UV emissions from the aurora of the Jupiter, according to the study.
From the UV spectrum of the effect can be seen the emission emanating from the black man, according to Giles, with a temperature of nearly 9,600 degrees Kelvin (9,328 degrees Celsius), located at an altitude of 140 miles above the top of the planet’s clouds . . Monitoring the intensity of the flash, the authors of the study have estimated that it was caused by an impact machine with a mass between 250-1,500 kilograms.