Since 2016, the Juno‐UVS (Ultraviolet Spectrograph) instrument has been taking spectral images of Jupiter's auroras in their full extent, including the nightside, which cannot be viewed from Earth. We present a systematic analysis of features in Jupiter's polar auroras called auroral bright spots, which were observed by Juno‐UVS during the first 25 orbits of the spacecraft. An auroral bright spot is an isolated localized and transient brightening in the polar region. Bright spots were identified in 16 perijoves (PJ) out of 24, mostly in either the northern or the southern hemisphere but rarely in both during the same PJ. The emitted power of the bright spots is time variable with peak power ranging from a few tens to a hundred of gigawatts. Moreover, we found that, for some PJs, bright spots exhibit quasiperiodic behavior. The spots, within PJ4 and PJ16, each reappeared within <2,000 km from the previous position in System III with periods of 28 and 22 min, respectively. This period is similar to periods previously identified in X‐rays and various other observations. The bright spot positions are in a specific region in the northern hemisphere in System III, but are scattered around the magnetic pole in the southern hemisphere, near the edge of the swirl region. Furthermore, the bright spots can be seen at any local time, rather than being confined to the noon sector as previously thought from Earth‐based observations. This suggests that the bright spots might not be firmly connected to the noon facing magnetospheric cusp processes.
The magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling at Jupiter produces the brightest UV aurora in the solar system. These emissions result from precipitating charged particles at high latitudes. Extensive monitoring of these emissions using Earth-orbiting observatories, as well as flyby and orbiting spacecrafts, revealed that they can be used as a remote proxy for various magnetospheric processes. The different components of the auroral emissions reflect the various processes occurring throughout the magnetosphere. They range from the lower latitude auroral emissions caused by the satellite-magnetodisk interactions, to the high-latitude polar auroral emissions, related to the outer magnetosphere dynamics as well as the interaction region with the solar wind (e.g.,
<p>The instruments on board the NASA Juno mission provides scientists with a wealth of unprecedented details about Jupiter. In particular, the Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) is dedicated to the study of Jupiter&#8217;s aurora in the 60-200 nm wavelength range. The images taken by Juno-UVS reveals for the first time a complete view of Jupiter&#8217;s aurora, including the nightside part hidden from the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope (HST). This work aims to study Jupiter&#8217;s polar aurora using images obtained from the UVS instruments. Here we present the systematic analysis of one of the most spectacular features of Jupiter&#8217;s polar-most aurora, called the bright spot. The emitted power of the bright spots ranges from a few to a hundred GWs. Within a Juno perijove, the spots reappear at almost the same positions in system III. The time interval between two consecutive brightenings is a few tens of minutes, comparable to Jupiter&#8217;s X-ray pulsation. The comparison of the time interval with X-ray observation is under the investigation. Comparing the difference perijove sequences, the system III positions of bright spots in the northern hemisphere are concentrated in a region around 175 degrees of system III longitude and 65 degrees of latitude. On the other hand, the positions of bright spot aurora the southern hemisphere are scattered all around the pole. Previous studies suggested that the bright spot could correspond to noon facing magnetospheric cusp. However and surprisingly, we have discovered that the bright spots could map to any magnetic local time, putting this interpretation into question.</p>
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