Detection of a bolide in Jupiter's atmosphere with Juno UVS

Abstract

The UVS instrument on the Juno mission recorded transient bright emission from a point source in Jupiter's atmosphere. The spectrum shows that the emission is consistent with a 9600-K blackbody located 225 km above the 1-bar level and the duration of the emission was between 17 ms and 150 s. These characteristics are consistent with a bolide in Jupiter's atmosphere. Based on the energy emitted, we estimate that the impactor had a mass of 250-5000 kg, which corresponds to a diameter of 1-4 m. By considering all observations made with Juno UVS over the first 27 perijoves of the mission, we estimate an impact flux rate of 24,000 per year for impactors with masses greater than 250-5000 kg.

Accepted in GRL. 21 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (4)

• A study of the possibility of sprites in the atmospheres of other planets
• Possible Transient Luminous Events observed in Jupiter's upper atmosphere
• Detection of a bolide in Jupiter's atmosphere with Juno UVS
• Fragmentation modelling of the August 2019 impact on Jupiter

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• Jupiter Science Enabled by ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer
• Detection of a bolide in Jupiter's atmosphere with Juno UVS
• The Polar Stratosphere of Jupiter
• Detection of an extremely large impact flash on Jupiter by high-cadence multiwavelength observations
• A retrospective analysis of mid-infrared observations of the Comet D/Shoemaker-Levy 9 and Wesley impacts on Jupiter
• Modelling the optical energy profile of the 2021 October Jupiter impact flash
• Cloud reflection modelling for impact flashes on Jupiter: A new constraint on the bulk properties of the impact objects