This is a lot different to the activity on Earth as the southern and northern lights are similar and approximately mirror to each other.
William Dunn, a stargazer who works at University College London and the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, found that the aurora at Jupiter’s north pole pulse every 11 minutes.
But the aurora at the south pole behaves more chaotically, brightening and dimming independently of the north.
And Dunn and his colleagues found “hot spots” at the poles are larger than Earth’s.
He said: “We didn’t expect to see Jupiter’s X-ray hot spots pulsing independently as we thought their activity would be coordinated through the planet’s magnetic field.
“We need to study this further.”
The scientists suggested the lights could be produced by electrically charged particles from Jupiter’s moon, as well as the solar wind, a radioactive stream of particles produced by the sun.
But this light theory remains a mystery at this stage.
This news comes after NASA announced they will be spending billions of dollars to explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa, to find aliens.
The US space agency has probed the moon for years and is preparing for one of their biggest-ever missions.
NASA’s Europa Clipper, a solar-powered robot, is set to travel across the surface with cameras.
Source: dailystar.co.uk
Ask me anything
Explore related questions