Radiation from Jupiter

[howardsims]

When they discuss the Galileo space craft, they are always talking ahout the immense radiation that Jupiter gives off.
Why does Jupiter give off radioation? How is it generated?

[jb_farley]

well, jupiter is pretty damn big, close to star mass (not too close, but lemme run with this). So it's not too unlikely that fusion is going on, just not enough to be star-like.


However, as far as I know, this is still a mystery.


jb

[Patty O'Furniture]

From The Nine Planets (http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/jupiter.html):


Jupiter has a huge magnetic field, much stronger than Earth's. Its magnetosphere extends more than 650 million km (past the orbit of Saturn!). (Note that Jupiter's magnetosphere is far from spherical -- it extends "only" a few million kilometers in the direction toward the Sun.) Jupiter's moons therefore lie within its magnetosphere, a fact which may partially explain some of the activity on Io. Unfortunately for future space travelers and of real concern to the designers of the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft, the environment near Jupiter contains high levels of energetic particles trapped by Jupiter's magnetic field. This "radiation" is similar to, but much more intense than, that found within Earth's Van Allen belts. It would be immediately fatal to an unprotected human being.

The Galileo atmospheric probe discovered a new intense radiation belt between Jupiter's ring and the uppermost atmospheric layers. This new belt is approximately 10 times as strong as Earth's Van Allen radiation belts. Surprisingly, this new belt was also found to contain high energy helium ions of unknown origin.