A flash inside a Jovian vortex
Processed image. JunoCam observed the lightning glow in a northern vortex on 30 December 2020, flyby 31; Kevin M. Gill processed the data in 2022 and the archive published it in 2023. This is a different camera and event from the 2018 night-side SRU observations.
Creative Commons Attribution (version not specified by source) · resized to WebP
· Original image source · Image licenceA tiny luminous detail in a storm system larger than countries.
- World
- Jupiter
- Case date or period
- Observations · 2018–2022
Look closer
JunoCam captured the glow of lightning near Jupiter’s north pole; Kevin M. Gill processed the observation. The image turns a familiar weather phenomenon into an unfamiliar planetary scene.
Follow the evidence
The companion vortex photographs provide weather context. The two SRU products show separate 2018 optical detections, while the JunoCam cover records a later event. Distinguish lightning from particle hits and from enlarged display pixels; camera type, capture date and processing matter when comparing these faint signals.
Built by people looking closely
The credited image processors worked with publicly available mission observations. Their versions are part of this collection, with each person’s processing and licence retained. Compare the treatments and return to the underlying source when a small detail matters.
Another camera revealed shallower flashes
Heidi Becker’s 2020 investigation used Juno’s sensitive Stellar Reference Unit on Jupiter’s night side, rather than JunoCam’s colour views. Small optical flashes indicated thunderstorms higher in the atmosphere than the deep water-cloud origin previously assumed. The team proposed that ammonia mixing with water permits liquid droplets at these colder levels. Those instrument observations are separate from the later north-polar flash shown here, and the proposed charging mechanism is not something a single luminous spot directly photographs.
Testing the ammonia explanation
Yury Aglyamov and colleagues modelled moist convection, particle growth and charging, comparing predicted lightning with Galileo and Juno observations. Their one-dimensional model produced lightning across a range of atmospheric pressures; lowering water’s freezing point helped reproduce shallow flashes. The results depend on water abundance, ammonia mixing and how convection begins. This supports a physical explanation while leaving particle sizes and time-dependent storm behaviour unresolved; it is not a direct measurement of liquid droplets inside the photographed vortex.
Sources & further reading
- NASA's Juno Mission Captures Lightning On Jupiter — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- NASA's Juno Views Northern Cyclones on Jupiter — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- A Jupiter Circumpolar Cyclone — NASA Image and Video Library / JPL
- JunoCam public image-processing gallery — Mission Juno / public contributors
- Shallow Lightning and Mushballs Reveal Ammonia to NASA’s Juno Scientists — NASA / JPL; Heidi Becker and Juno team
- Lightning Generation in Moist Convective Clouds and Constraints on the Water Abundance in Jupiter — Aglyamov and colleagues (2021) — Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets
- A star camera catches lightning and particle hits — NASA / JPL · Radiation Monitoring Investigation
- Small optical flashes in the night-side clouds — NASA / JPL · Stellar Reference Unit science team