text: Jupiter's X-Ray Hot Spots --"South Pole Auroras Pulse Every 11 Seconds, North Pole's Erratically" | The Daily Galaxy
  Jupiter's X-Ray Hot Spots –"South Pole Auroras Pulse Every 11 Seconds, North Pole's Erratically"
  "If we can start to connect the X-ray signatures with the physical processes that produce them, then we can use those signatures to understand other bodies across the Universe such as brown dwarfs, exoplanets or maybe even neutron stars. It is a very powerful and important step towards understanding X-rays throughout the Universe and one that we only have while Juno is conducting measurements simultaneously with Chandra and XMM-Newton," said William Dunn, University College London Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UK and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
  Jupiter's intense northern and southern lights pulse independently of each other according to new UCL-led research using ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray observatories. The study, published today in Nature Astronomy, found that very high-energy X-ray emissions at Jupiter's south pole consistently pulse every 11 minutes. Meanwhile those at the north pole are erratic: increasing and decreasing in brightness, independent of the south pole.
  This behavior is distinct from Earth's north and south auroras which broadly mirror each other in activity. Other similarly large planets, such as Saturn, do not produce any detectable X-ray aurora, which makes the findings at Jupiter particularly puzzling.
  "We didn't expect to see Jupiter's X-ray hot spots pulsing independently as we thought their activity would be coordinated through the planet's magnetic field. We need to study this further to develop ideas for how Jupiter produces its X-ray aurora and NASA's Juno mission is really important for this," explained lead author, Dunn.
  "The behavior of Jupiter's X-ray hot spots raises important questions about what processes produce these auroras. We know that a combination of solar wind ions and ions of Oxygen and Sulphur, originally from volcanic explosions from Jupiter's moon, Io, are involved. However, their relative importance in producing the X-ray emissions is unclear," explained co-author Dr Licia Ray (Lancaster University).