Latest at Jupiter
Jupiter is struck by lightning
When NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft flew past Jupiter in March 1979 it observed a very peculiar phenomenon: lightning. Although it had been theorised for centuries, the radio signals produced by lightning weren’t observed until this flyby. However, the lightning-associated signals didn’t match the radio signals produced on Earth.
“No matter what planet you’re on, lightning bolts act like radio transmitters – sending out radio waves when they flash across a sky,” said Shannon Brown of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, United States, also a Juno scientist. “But, until Juno, all the lightning signals recorded by spacecraft [Voyagers 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini] were limited to either visual detections or from the kilohertz range of the radio spectrum, despite a search…
