By Paolo Montoya
Editor-in-Chief

NASA has found evidence of sprites on Jupiter, and it is not the fantasy kind. 

Far above the Earth’s thunderstorms, electricity is constantly being discharged in beautiful shows of light- bright red flashes, or transient luminous events, as scientists refer to them. While their existence on Earth has only recently been confirmed, NASA is already looking far beyond the boundaries of our planet. Since 2019, Jupiter’s Juno mission has been seeking for evidence of sprites—and in April of this year, they struck gold.

Juno’s Ultraviolet Spectrograph Instrument (UVS) measures light intensity in terms of the amount of ultra-violet photons that are emitted at a specific point on Jupiter. The image that led NASA to make this discovery shows a high intensity of UV photons at a very distant point where there normally is no light. After ruling out possibilities, it becomes evident not only that sprites happen in Jupiter’s surroundings, but their color differed. It was not red, but blue. 

“It’s exciting to see that we’re making discoveries that are showing that the other planets are very much like ours.” Dr. Hood, MAST’s physics teacher, said.  

With this discovery, NASA hopes to continue to find similarities between the atmospheres of other planets and our own, which creates opportunities for further exploration in the future. 

Artemis Theodoridis, the president of the Astronomy Club, shares her outlook on this discovery. 

“The discovery of sprites on Jupiter, which are similar to transient luminous events on Earth is an extremely significant addition to our knowledge of atmospheric science, and the varying differences between the phenomenon on Jupiter and Earth provide even greater opportunity to understand what is already a recent field of study.”

Ultimately, this discovery is but one small step for NASA. With their Artemis mission soon inbound, its only a matter of time before more discoveries are made, and we are one step closer to understanding our universe.