Alien green flash: Lightning crackles in vortex near Jupiter's north pole (photo)

By Mike Wall published 1 day ago
NASA's Juno probe captured the striking image.



NASA's Juno spacecraft captured this view of a lightning strike in the clouds near Jupiter's north pole on Dec. 30, 2020. (Image credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS. Image processing by Kevin M. Gill © CC BY )

NASA's Juno probe keeps giving us great looks at Jupiter's wild weather.

Juno has been looping around Jupiter on a highly elliptical path since July 2016, making detailed observations of the gas giant during close passes over its poles.

During its 31st such flyby, on Dec. 31, 2020, Juno captured a great shot of the greenish glow from a lightning strike inside a swirling vortex near Jupiter's north pole. The spacecraft was just 19,900 miles (32,000 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops at the time, NASA wrote in a description of the image, which the agency released on Thursday (June 15).

Citizen scientist Kevin Gill processed the newly released image using raw data gathered by Juno's JunoCam instrument, NASA officials added. The Juno team welcomes such collaborations; you can try your image-processing hand at the JunoCam site.

This was not Juno's only brush with Jovian lightning — far from it, in fact. The spacecraft has observed many strikes in Jupiter's thick atmosphere, helping scientists determine that lightning on the gas giant is quite similar to the bolts we see here on Earth.

More:
https://www.space.com/jupiter-lightning-north-pole-juno-photo