NASA's Juno mission spots 'shallow lightning' across Jupiter's cloud tops

NASA’s Ju craft recently spotted ‘sparkling’ lightning storms zip across our solar system’s largest planet. On August 5, US ncy took to Instagram to share an illustration of Jupiter that was formed using data obtained by Ju mission. picture depicts high-altitude electrical storms, also kwn as ‘shallow lightning', on Jupiter. 

According to a press te, ‘shallow lightning’ is an unexpected form of electrical discharge that originates from clouds containing an ammonia-water solution. In post, NASA explained that it was previously believed that lightning on Jupiter was similar to Earth. However, with flashes observed at altitudes too cold for pure liquid water to exist “told a different story”. 

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Heidi Becker, Ju's Riation Monitoring Investigation le at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Sourn California, said that craft's close flybys of cloud tops allowed scientists to see something surprising – smaller, shallower flashes – originating at much higher altitudes in Jupiter's atmosphere than previously assumed possible.

Ju team suggests that Jupiter’s powerful thunderstorm fill water-ice crystals high up into planet’s atmosphere ammonia vapour that melts ice, forming a new ammonia-water solution 

‘Mushballs’: Ammonia-rich hailstones

NASA scientists also found that violent thunderstorms, for which gaseous planet is kwn, may form slushy ammonia-rich hailstones. Ju’s mission team called hailstones ‘mushballs’ and orised that y essentially trap ammonia and water in upper atmosphere and carry m into depths of Jupiter’s atmosphere. 

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scientists said that 'mushballs' are generated in a similar manner as hail on Earth. Tristan Guillot,  Ju co-investigator from Université Côte d'Azur in Nice, France said, " mushballs get so big, even updrafts can't hold m, and y fall deeper into atmosphere, encountering even warmer temperatures, where y eventually evaporate completely”. 

She furr ded, “ir action drags ammonia and water down to deep levels in planet's atmosphere. That explains why we don't see much of it in se places with Ju's Microwave Riometer”. 

Ju arrived at Jupiter in 2016 and since n has gotten much closer to giant planet’s cloud tops. According to NASA, since its ascend on planet,  solar-power Jupiter explorer has performed 27 science flybys and logged over 300 million miles.

Ju is part of NASA's New Frontiers Program, which is mand at NASA's Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for ncy's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

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