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Io — Jupiter’s fifth moon — is the most volcanically active body in the solar system. Io’s surface is peppered with hundreds of volcanoes, some spewing sulfurous plumes hundreds of miles high. The volcanic moon is Jupiter’s third-largest and the innermost Galilean satellite, it finds itself caught in a gravitational tug-of-war between Jupiter and two … Read more
When a rogue meteor careened through the atmosphere of Jupiter last year, it caught the attention of NASA’s Juno spacecraft in orbit around the giant planet. The brief and sudden flash in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere was spotted by NASA’s Juno spacecraft in April 2020. But, while the burst of light didn’t last long, it drew … Read more
A powerful new picture of Jupiter posted by a citizen scientist shows the planet looming large with the shadow of its biggest moon Ganymede blanketing its clouds. The image comes from Kevin M. Gill, who posted copies on Twitter and Flickr after analyzing data from the Juno spacecraft’s 20th close flyby of May 2019. Like … Read more
Jupiter’s atmosphere has a strange composition, but it could be explained if the planet formed farther away from the sun than where it orbits today, a new study suggests. Scientists have known since NASA’s Galileo mission in the 1990s that the atmosphere of the largest planet of the solar system contains heavier chemical elements, elements … Read more
Jupiter’s auroras are caused by a cosmic game of “tug-of-war,” fueled by volcanoes on the planet’s innermost moon, Io, new research suggests. NASA’s Juno spacecraft and Hubble Space Telescope have revealed new evidence suggesting Jupiter’s rapid rotation and the release of sulfur and oxygen from volcanoes on Io — the most volcanically active world in … Read more
Jupiter’s auroras – the lights that dance around its poles – are the most distinct in our solar system and over a thousand times brighter than Earth’s aurora. Now, a new study confirms that these otherworldly polar lights come from a unique source: space lava. Jupiter‘s moon Io is the most volcanically active world in the solar … Read more
Beyond the Solar System, out there in the wider galaxy, a very strange subset of exoplanets exists. Called hot Jupiters, these are majorly clingy – hugging so close to their host stars, they’re not just intensely hot, but also likely warped by gravitational forces. Now, for the first time, astronomers have actually detected the … Read more
Giant cyclones around the poles of the solar system’s largest planet are generated by the same forces that move water in Earth’s oceans, a new study has found. Jupiter’s gargantuan polar cyclones, which are up to 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) across, were first spotted in 2016 by NASA’s probe Juno. Since then, scientists have speculated … Read more
Earth and Jupiter don’t have a lot in common. One is relatively small, rocky, and habitable. The other is absolutely enormous, completely lacking in solidity, and raging with colossal storms. Yet, if you look at some satellite pictures of marine phytoplankton blooms here on Earth next to pictures of atmospheric turbulence at Jupiter’s poles, it … Read more
The latest images from the Juno mission at Jupiter include views of giant storms and vortexes on the gas giant world in amazing detail. A new batch of images recently arrived at Earth from JunoCam, the visible light camera onboard the Juno spacecraft. The camera has provided stunning views of Jupiter since the spacecraft’s arrival in 2016. … Read more