Scientists Uncover Another Saturn Mystery Behind Its Stunning Aurorae
Saturn is mainly known for its stunning rings and the super-fast winds that can attain speeds of over a thousand miles per hour, but space enthusiasts have discovered that these swirling winds are also responsible for the formation of stunning aurorae in its atmosphere. The first observation of the gas giant's beautiful aurora was made in 1979 when the Pioneer 11 spacecraft noticed far-ultraviolet brightening on the planet's poles. A few years later, the flyby missions of Voyager 1 and 2 provided a better description of how these cosmic light shows originate out of magnetic field disturbances.
The curtain-like auroras seen on Saturn are red at the bottom and purple at the top, while those seen on the Earth are green in the shade. The color difference can be attributed to the fact that energetic Nitrogen and Oxygen atoms form the building blocks of Earth's polar aurora, while those on Saturn trace their origin to Hydrogen. Other factors like atmospheric density, the ratio of atomic and molecular constituents, and the energy of colliding electrons also affect the color. But so far, scientists have believed that Saturn's auroras are produced due to interaction between Saturn's magnetosphere and charged particles coming from the sun.
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A team of scientists has observed — for the first time — that some portion of aurorae seen on the massive planet is created by the winds raging in its atmosphere, while the rest is produced due to Saturn's magnetic field. Researchers made the observations at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which recently also contributed to the discovery of two mini-Neptune exoplanets losing their atmosphere to radiation from their star and are
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