Jupiter’s Spooky Sounds: Emissions From Jupiter’s Auroras Captured

When NASA's solar-powered spacecraft-Juno-made its first full orbit around Jupiter, an instrument from the University of Iowa that was on-board, recorded ghostly haunting sounds being emitted from Jupiter's Auroras.

The mentioned UI instrument was trying to capture sounds from light shows of Jupiter's auroras that are similar to the southern and northern lights on Earth but on a greatly larger scale. The radio emissions coming from Jupiter's auroras were recorded by the UI instrument, known as Waves, while Juno spacecraft orbited about 2,600 miles above Jupiter's twirling clouds. The sound recordings were later converted into audio files by UI engineers.

NASA said that emissions from Jupiter were first discovered in the 1950s but had not been analyzed from such a close stance ever before.

"Jupiter is talking to us in a way only gas-giant worlds can," says Bill Kurth, the research scientist at the UI. He explained that Waves detected the signature emissions of the energetic particles that generate the massive auroras encircling Jupiter's North Pole. These emissions are the strongest in the solar system. Now they plan to learn where the electrons that are generating them come from.

The information was first received by the UI Waves team members-Kurth, associate research scientist George Hospodarsky, Professor Don Gurnett and post-doctoral researcher Masafumi Imai- in late August when they were attending a scientific meeting regarding Juno. It was a memorable moment as the first up-close sampling of the auroras that are generated by the largest planet of the Solar System were recorded.

The researchers now want to figure out how the ions and electrons are accelerated along the magnetic field lines above Jupiter to collide with the atmosphere at last, creating the bursts of light that eventually become auroras. In order to gain data related to that, Waves instrument will now sample the plasma waves present along the different segments in the magnetic field lines, each having its orbit around Jupiter.

The radio waves recorded by the instrument were inaudible at first. They had to be downshifted into the audio range and then compressed to achieve an abbreviated soundtrack, according to Science Daily.

Waves' next measurements are due on November 2, and that is something the UI scientists can't wait to learn about.