You're here: My Science Blogging » Astronomy » Article: Saturn’s Mysterious Aurora
dhani — November 27, 2008 / 10:47 am
This image of the northern polar region of Saturn shows both the aurora and underlying atmosphere, seen at two different wavelengths of infrared light as captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
Auroras are caused by charged particles streaming along the magnetic field lines of a planet into its atmosphere. Particles from the sun cause Earth’s auroras. Many, but not all, of the auroras at Jupiter and Saturn are caused by particles trapped within the magnetic environments of those planets.
Jupiter’s main auroral ring, caused by interactions internal to Jupiter’s magnetic environment, is constant in size. Saturn’s main aurora, which is caused by the solar wind, changes size dramatically as the wind varies. The newly observed aurora at Saturn, however, doesn’t fit into either category.
More on this peculiar phenomenon can be read on here.
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