Possible Transient Luminous Events observed in Jupiter's upper atmosphere
arXiv:2010.13740 · doi:10.1029/2020JE006659
Abstract
11 transient bright flashes were detected in Jupiter's atmosphere using the UVS instrument on the Juno spacecraft. These bright flashes are only observed in a single spin of the spacecraft and their brightness decays exponentially with time, with a duration of ~1.4 ms. The spectra are dominated by H2 Lyman band emission and based on the level of atmospheric absorption, we estimate a source altitude of 260 km above the 1-bar level. Based on these characteristics, we suggest that these are observations of Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. In particular, we suggest that these are elves, sprites or sprite halos, three types of TLEs that occur in the Earth's upper atmosphere in response to tropospheric lightning strikes. This is supported by visible light imaging, which shows cloud features typical of lightning source regions at the locations of several of the bright flashes. TLEs have previously only been observed on Earth, although theoretical and experimental work has predicted that they should also be present on Jupiter.
Accepted in JGR: Planets. 28 pages, 8 figures
References in corpus (5)
- Non-linear Least Squares Fitting in IDL with MPFIT
- Sprite discharges on Venus and Jupiter-like planets: a laboratory investigation
- A study of the possibility of sprites in the atmospheres of other planets
- Possible Transient Luminous Events observed in Jupiter's upper atmosphere
- Three-dimensional modeling of lightning-induced electromagnetic pulses on Venus, Jupiter and Saturn