On Jupiter's north pole, a brilliant green dot can be seen in a picture acquired by NASA's JunoCam spacecraft. The bright object is actually a lightning bolt, according to NASA.
According to NASA, clouds holding an ammonia-water mix frequently produce lightning near Jupiter's poles, in contrast to water clouds around the equator that frequently produce lightning 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 download and processing.
On December 30, 2020, Juno photographed a lightning strike as it was around 19,900 miles above Jupiter's cloud tops. It was processed by Kevin M. Gill, who NASA refers to as a "citizen scientist."
Other planets also experience lightning. NASA reports that in 1979, another spacecraft named Voyager 1 photographed lightning bursts on Jupiter that were 10 times more intense than lightning on Earth. Lightning strikes as frequently as ten times per second on Saturn.
Although there were brilliant flashes during dust storms and some scientists think that craters on Mars may have been produced by lightning strikes, the Mars Global Surveyor's data did not record any information on lightning.
The intended five-year mission of Juno has been extended by NASA until 2025. Jupiter's structural structure, internal magnetic field, atmosphere, magnetosphere, dust in its weak rings, and Great Blue Spot, an extreme magnetic field near the planet's equator, have all been studied by the spacecraft.
Additionally, Juno is passing through Jupiter's moons, which are encircled by donut-shaped clouds that Juno will travel through.
Astronomers revealed earlier this year that they had found 12 brand-new moons in Jupiter's atmosphere. In 2021 and 2022, telescopes in Chile and Hawaii captured images of the moons. There are currently a record 92 moons on the planet.