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Jupiter Animation from Chandra

Posted on 08 August 2007 · 3,616 views · 152 words.

I’m just prepping another post at the moment but came across this great animation on my travels. It shows Jupiter as seen from the Chandra satellite, which captures X-Ray information. As you see from the (hopefully moving) picture below, Jupiter is mostly invisible when seen in the X-Ray. You can however see some dancing spots at each pole. These are aurora happening on Jupiter. This image was taken in December 2000 but other images of aurora on Jupiter have also been snapped.

Chandra Image of Jupiter

Aurora occur when high energy particles from the Sun interact with the atmosphere. Here on Earth they are called the Northern or Southern lights or Auroa Borealis/Australis.

This post was written by:

ttfnRob - who has written 489 posts on Orbiting Frog.

I am studying for my PhD in Astronomy at Cardiff University in the UK. Star formation is my main area of research but really I like anything to do with space, science and the internet.

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