United News of Bangladesh

Stunning new images from the James Webb Space Telescope show that Jupiter’s auroras shine hundreds of times more brightly than those on Earth. These brilliant light displays occur when energetic particles from space crash into gas atoms in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere near its magnetic poles — a phenomenon similar to the auroras, or northern lights, seen on Earth. But Jupiter’s version has much greater intensity, according to an international team of scientists who analyzed the photos from Webb taken on Christmas in 2023. Soviet-era spacecraft plunges to Earth after 53 years stuck in orbit Webb previously captured Neptune’s glowing auroras in the best detail yet, many decades after they were first faintly detected during a flyby of the Voyager 2 spacecraft.    

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has provided the first close-ups of Jupiter’s largest moon in two decades. Juno zoomed past icy Ganymede on Monday, passing within 645 miles (1,038 kilometers). The last time a spacecraft came that close was in 2000 when NASA’s Galileo spacecraft swept past our solar system’s biggest moon. Read:NASA picks Venus as hot spot for two new robotic missions NASA released Juno’s first two pictures Tuesday, highlighting Ganymede’s craters and long, narrow features possibly related to tectonic faults. One shows the moon’s far side, opposite the sun. “This is the closest any spacecraft has come to this mammoth moon in a generation,” said Juno’s lead scientist, Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “We are going to take our time before we draw any scientific conclusions, but until then we can simply marvel at this celestial wonder – the only moon in our solar system bigger than the planet Mercury.” Read:Chinese cargo spacecraft docks with orbital station Ganymede is one of 79 known moons around Jupiter, a gas giant. Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei discovered Ganymede in 1610, along with Jupiter’s three next-biggest moons. Launched a decade ago, Juno has been orbiting Jupiter for five years.

Cape Canaveral, OCT 8. (AP/UNB) — The solar system has a new winner in the moon department.