A New Type of Aurora Found on Saturn Resolves a Planetary Mystery
Earth's northern and southern lights-the result of a rendezvous between magnetic fields, energized particles from the Sun, and our planet's atmospheric admixture-are wondrous spectacles.
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"To my knowledge, [this is the] first time an aurora driven by atmospheric winds has been detected," says Rosie Johnson, a space physics researcher at Aberystwyth University in Wales who is not involved with the study.
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Earth makes it easy to measure how long a day lasts: 24 hours.That's because our planet is covered in readily identifiable, fixed landmarks.
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You can't do this for worlds where the surfaces are obfuscated by thick gaseous veils, like Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.