One of the great natural wonders of the world are the Northern Lights, but aurorae aren't just limited to Earth -- they are on other planets and moons as well.
One of the Earth’s great natural wonders is the Northern Lights or aurora borealis; delicate waves of colors that appear in the sky over polar regions when energetic particles from the sun interact with Earth’s magnetic field. But Earth isn’t the only planet to experience aurorae, as the strong magnetic fields of planets like Jupiter and Saturn mean that aurorae are observed there as well.
“These observations are tricky because in Jupiter’s shadow, the moons are nearly invisible,” said one of the lead researchers, Katherine de Kleer of Caltech, in a statement. “The light emitted by their faint aurorae is the only confirmation that we’ve even pointed the telescope at the right place.” And on Io, which has plumes of sodium chloride and potassium chloride coming from its volcanoes, its aurorae can have a yellow-orange color.
As aurorae occur when particles from the sun interact with a magnetosphere, you might expect that a moon would need a magnetic field of its own to experience these phenomena. But three of the moons in question — other than Ganymede — don’t have their own magnetic fields. However, the magnetic field of Jupiter is so strong that its effects reach out to its moons.
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