NASA’s X-ray Space Telescope “Nustar” has detected a mysterious high-energy X-ray coming from Jupiter.
According to the scientific website “Nature”, these rays, which were observed, are the most active among the rays coming from any planet in the solar system except for Earth.
The discovery could shed light on the most powerful auroras in the Solar System, and solve an age-old mystery: why the ESA-NASA Ulysses spacecraft did not detect any X-rays of the planet during its nearly three decades of operation between 1990 and 2009. .
The scientists thought there must also be high-energy x-rays, or “extreme” x-rays, beyond what those devices could detect. So they used Neustar to search for it.
“It’s very difficult for planets to generate X-rays in the range that Nustar detects,” said astrophysicist Kaia Morey of Columbia University.
For his part, astronomer William Dunn from University College London in the United Kingdom said: “The discovery of these emissions does not close the case, it opens a new chapter,” noting that “we still have a lot of questions about these emissions and their sources. We know that magnetic fields Rotors can accelerate particles, but we don’t fully understand how they reach such high speeds on Jupiter. What are the basic processes that naturally produce such energetic particles?”
The aurora borealis of Jupiter is similar to and different from the aurora borealis on Earth, as it is generated by particles blowing from the sun. They collide with Earth’s magnetic field, which sends charged particles such as protons and electrons that oscillate along magnetic field lines toward the poles, where they rain down on Earth’s upper atmosphere and collide with atmospheric particles. The resulting ionization of these particles generates amazing dancing lights.
The formation of the aurora borealis of Jupiter is a very remarkable phenomenon. At both poles, the planet is surrounded by permanent auroras – invisible to our eyes, but glowing brilliantly at ultraviolet wavelengths. These regions have also been observed emitting low-energy or “soft” X-rays by the Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray observatories.
X-rays from Jupiter are part of massive bursts of visible and invisible light emitted by the planet, created by the collision of charged particles called “ions” in its atmosphere.