Astronomers spotted "lightning jellyfish" on Jupiter, which are found only on Earth

Sprites are a type of electrical discharge of cold plasma that strikes the mesosphere and thermosphere. Sprites

difficult to distinguish, but they appear in stronga thunderstorm at an altitude of approximately 50 to 130 kilometers (the height of formation of “ordinary” lightning is no more than 16 kilometers) and reaches a length of up to 60 km and up to 100 km in diameter. The appearance of sprites was recorded only on Earth. They are often jellyfish-like in shape.

Previously, scientists predicted that these brightsuperfast flashes of light must have been present in Jupiter's vast, bubbling atmosphere, but their existence remained theoretical. Then, in the summer of 2019, researchers working with data from Juno's Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) discovered something unexpected: a bright, narrow band of ultraviolet radiation that disappeared in a flash.

Jupiter's south pole and possible short-termlight event — a bright, unpredictable and extremely short flash of light — are visible in this annotated image of data acquired on April 10, 2020, by the Juno UVS instrument. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI.

The appearance of sprites and elves on Jupiter waspredicted by several previously published studies. According to these predictions, 11 large-scale bright events detected by the UVS Juno instrument occurred in the region where lightning is known to form. Juno scientists could also rule out that they were just mega-lightning, tk. they were found about 300 kilometers above the site where most of Jupiter's lightning occurs. And UVS recorded that hydrogen emissions predominated in the spectra of bright flares, which is typical for sprites.

Comparing sprites from Jupiter to those that occur on Earth will help scientists better understand electrical activity in planetary atmospheres.

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