NASA’s spacecraft photographs Jupiter’s green glowing dot

A sparkling green dot can be seen on Jupiter’s north pole in a picture obtained by NASA’s JunoCam spacecraft. According to NASA, the luminous object is a lightning bolt.

As per NASA, clouds holding an ammonia-water mix commonly produce lightning around Jupiter’s poles, in contrast to water clouds around the equator that frequently produce lighting on Earth.

In 2016, Juno launched its journey to Jupiter, orbiting the planet 35 times while gathering data and taking pictures. NASA makes the photographs captured by the spacecraft available for downloading and processing.

On December 30, 2020, Juno photographed an electrical storm as it was around 19,900 miles beyond Jupiter’s cloud peaks. It was examined by Kevin M. Gill, who NASA refers to as a “citizen scientist.”

There is lightning on other planets as well. As reported by NASA, a different spacecraft named Voyager 1 photographed lightning bursts on Jupiter in 1979 that were ten times more intense than thunder on Earth.