Jupiter Captured in Stunning Photo Showing Green Lightning Bolt by NASA’s Juno Spacecraft

The wonders of the universe can be incredibly captivating. The breathtaking images captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope in a single year have proven this fact. However, other NASA spacecraft are now joining in on the excitement. The NASA Juno spacecraft, currently in orbit around Jupiter, recently took a perplexing photo revealing a green sphere deep within the planet. But, contrary to popular belief, this is not a signal from extraterrestrial life. NASA has clarified that the image depicts the radiance of a lightning bolt on Jupiter.

A NASA blog post explaining the phenomenon stated: “In this view of a vortex near Jupiter’s north pole, NASA’s Juno mission observed the glint of lightning. On Earth, lightning originates from water clouds and occurs most often near the equator, while on Jupiter, lightning is likely to also occur in clouds that contain an ammonia-water solution, and they can be seen most often near the poles.

The NASA Juno spacecraft captures the glow of a lightning strike

The picture is not a new picture of Juno. The image was taken on December 30, 2020, when the spacecraft completed its 31st Jupiter flyby. The image was then processed by citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill from raw JunoCam data. At the time the image was taken, Juno was 32,000 kilometers above Jupiter’s cloud tops.

JunoCam is a visible light telescope camera and was included in the payload to study the dynamics of Jupiter’s clouds, especially the dynamics of the polar clouds. Scientists believed that JunoCam would only be able to operate during the first eight orbits of Jupiter, or until September 2017. However, it is still in working order.

In the coming months, Juno’s orbits will repeatedly bring it close to Jupiter as the spacecraft passes over the night side of the giant planet, giving Juno’s suite of science instruments even more opportunities to capture lightning in action.

NASA’s Juno Mission aims to measure Jupiter’s composition, gravitational field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. In addition, it will try to find clues about the origin of the planet, if it has a rocky core, the amount of water in the deep atmosphere, the mass distribution and its deep winds, which can reach speeds of up to 620 kilometers per hour.