The midnight births of the dramatic bright surges in Jupiter’s aurora known as dawn storms are captured in a new study of data from the Juno space probe.

The new study is the first to track the storms from their birth on the nightside of the giant planet through their full evolution. It was published today in AGU Advances, AGU’s journal for high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences.

During a dawn storm, Jupiter’s quiet and regular auroral arc transforms into a complex and intensely bright auroral feature. It emits hundreds to thousands of Gigawatts of ultraviolet light into space as it rotates from the night side to the dawn side and ultimately to the day side of the planet over the course of 5-10 hours. A Gigawatt is the power produced by a typical modern nuclear reactor. This colossal brightness implies that at least ten times more energy was transferred from the magnetosphere to the upper atmosphere of Jupiter.

Previously, dawn storms had only been observed from ground-based telescopes on Earth or the Hubble Space Telescope, which can only offer side views of the aurora and cannot see the night side of the planet. Juno revolves around Jupiter every 53 days along a highly elongated orbit that brings it right above the poles every orbit.

«This is a real game changer,» said Bertrand Bonfond, a researcher from the University of Liege and lead author of the new study. «We finally got to find out what was happening on the night side, where the dawn storms are born.»

Familiar auroral sequences, different engines Polar auroras on Earth and on Jupiter are images of processes occurring in the magnetic fields that surround them. Both planets generate magnetic fields that capture charged particles.

Story Source: Materials provided by University of Liege. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.