Astronomers have modeled a map of the thunderstorms on Jupiter

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Астрономы смоделировали карту гроз на ЮпитереThis scientist has helped the spacecraft “Juno”.

Astronomers have registered a high number of lightning on Jupiter and was able to build a map of their distribution in the atmosphere of a gas giant.

This scientist has helped the spacecraft “Juno”. It turned out that lightning on Jupiter is much more similar to earth than previously thought.

Storm activity on Jupiter has been observed since the late 1980s, when the spacecraft “Voyager-1” recorded her outburst in the optical range on the night side of the planet in a close flyby. Another confirmation of the natural phenomena was the discovery in the radio whistling atmospheric discharges (Whistler) – low-frequency electromagnetic waves that propagate in the gas giant’s atmosphere and create lightning discharges.

Now two groups of scientists have reported new results obtained with the automatic interplanetary station “Juno”, which explores the planet from orbit for two years.

A team of researchers headed by Ivanna Kolesovoy analyzed data collected by the tool MWR (Microwave Radiometer) mounted on the “Juno” during close flybys past Jupiter in the period from August 2016 to September 2017. Astronomers recorded a large number of Whistler lasting from several milliseconds to several tens of milliseconds, which are responsible for more than 1,600 cases of detection of lightning discharges. The incidence of lightning was similar to that observed on Earth, from 0.7 to 4 beats per second.

Another group, led by Shannon brown was found in data collected by the radiometer, 389 cases check Starikov – high-frequency electromagnetic waves (600 MHz – 1.2 GHz), which are also formed by lightning discharges. This is not the version that the speed of propagation of the discharges on Jupiter is smaller than Earth, causing the low-frequency component of the radio emission will dominate over high frequency.

The comparison of these data with data obtained by other devices, has allowed to construct a map of occurrence of lightning discharges. It turned out that the flashes of lightning that frequently occurred in the polar regions, almost absent near the equator, and the greatest frequency of thunderstorm discharges was observed in the Northern hemisphere above 40 latitude.

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