(ORDO NEWS) — Jupiter is famous for its spectacular auroras, or auroras. As on Earth, these blinding flashes are caused by the interaction of charged solar particles with Jupiter’s magnetic field and atmosphere.
Over the years, astronomers have also observed faint auroras in the atmospheres of Jupiter’s largest moons. They are known as the Galilean satellites. These are the moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
The auroras of these satellites are also the result of interaction. However, in this case, the nature of this interaction is different: particles rising from the atmospheres of satellites crash into Jupiter’s magnetic field.
Detecting these weak aurors has always been a difficult task for scientists. The fact is that sunlight reflected from the surface of the moons completely overshadows their light “signatures”.
However, in a series of recent papers, a group of astronomers describe observations of the Galilean moons as they passed in Jupiter’s shadow. Thus, the giant hid the moons from sunlight.
Observations have shown that in the atmospheres of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto there is an “oxygen” aurora.
These auroras are dark red. And they are almost 15 times brighter than the green patterns we know that are born in the sky above the Earth.
“Such observations are difficult because the moons are almost invisible in the shadow of Jupiter.
The light emitted by their faint auroras is the only confirmation that we have pointed the telescope at the right place at all.
The brightness of the different colors of the aurora tells us what the atmospheres of these moons might be made of,” explains Katherine de Clare, professor at the California Institute of Technology and lead author of one of the new papers.
So astronomers discovered that the main component of the atmosphere of the Galilean satellites, as on Earth, is molecular oxygen (O2).
This is the first time astronomers have been able to observe infrared light in the atmospheres of Jupiter’s largest moons.
Moreover, the new measurements also revealed the presence of water vapor in the atmosphere of these satellites.
Recall that earlier scientists have already assumed that there are drops of water in the atmospheres of Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
It is also assumed that under the icy surface of these three moons there are internal oceans.
Future missions to these remote regions of the solar system will need to provide researchers with more data on the composition of the atmosphere of Jupiter and its moons.
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