Space / 1997-09-23
False Color Aurora
NASA's image library records False Color Aurora.
Data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft were used to produce this false-color composite of Jupiter's northern aurora on the night side of the planet. The height of the aurora, the thickness of the auroral arc, and the small-scale structure are revealed for the first time. Images in Galileo's red, green, and clear filters are displayed in red, green, an
A CLOSER LOOK
Data from NASA's Galileo spacecraft were used to produce this false-color composite of Jupiter's northern aurora on the night side of the planet. The height of the aurora, the thickness of the auroral arc, and the small-scale structure are revealed for the first time. Images in Galileo's red, green, and clear filters are displayed in red, green, and blue respectively. The smallest resolved features are tens of kilometers in size, which is a ten-fold improvement over Hubble Space Telescope images and a hundred-fold improvement over ground-based images. The glow is caused by electrically charged particles impinging on the atmosphere from above. The particles travel along Jupiter's magnetic field lines, which are nearly vertical at this latitude. The auroral arc marks the boundary between the
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FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
NASA Image and Video LibraryFalse Color AuroraOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.