NASA space telescope spots most powerful light ever seen on Jupiter, helps solve 30-year-old mystery

Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. In a new study, NASA’s NuSTAR space telescope spots the highest-energy light from Jupiter. (Image credit: Enhanced image by Kevin M. Gill (CC-BY) based on images provided courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS )

NASA has detected the most energetic light ever seen on Jupiter and, in the process, solved a 30-year-old mystery.

In a new study, researchers using NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) space observatory were able to spot the highest-energy light ever seen on Jupiter. The light, which is X-ray radiation, is also the highest-energy light ever seen on a planet in our solar system other than Earth.