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Juno Observes Sprites and Elves in Upper Atmosphere of Jupiter | Planetary Science, Space Exploration – Sci-News.com
NASA’s Juno spacecraft has observed three types of transient luminous events — elves, sprites or sprite halos — in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter.
NASAs Juno spacecraft has been in orbit around Jupiter since 2016. One of its instruments is the ultraviolet spectrograph (UVS), which is primarily used to make ultraviolet images of Jupiters auroras. During the first four years of the mission, the UVS instrument has observed 11 transient bright flashes. These flashes look similar to lightning, but are located much higher in the atmosphere than the cloudy regions of Jupiter where lightning is generated. In a paper published in the Journal of Geophysical…
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