Radio Storms on Jupiter

NASA ^ | 02/20/2004 | NASA

[kenth]

Waves crashing on a beach. Woodpeckers peck-peck pecking. Whales calling plaintively across the sea.

These are the sounds of Jupiter.

There are no whales or woodpeckers on Jupiter. There are no beaches. But Jupiter beams these sounds to Earth anyway. They emerge from the loudspeakers of short-wave radios during Jupiter's occasional, intense radio storms, caused by natural radio lasers near the planet's magnetic poles.

Many ham radio operators have heard these storms, late at night when Jupiter is high in the sky. Now you can listen, too, online, thanks to a live audio link to the University of Florida Radio Observatory, supported by NASA.

Not far from the meandering Suwannee River in central Florida, there is an array of odd-looking antennas: spiral "tee-pees" and gangly "Yagis." Every night these are trained on Jupiter, monitoring the planet for radio outbursts in the frequency range 18 to 32 MHz. Sensitive receivers translate Jupiter's radio waves to audio sounds. During a strong storm, the observatory's control room echoes with pecks, pops, and crackling swooshes.

[jigsaw]

That is cool! Thanks. I'll tune in again during the times they're predicting these storms.

[LibWhacker]

Bees! I hear killer bees! Glad I'm not there.

No, seriously, thanks for posting this! It's very cool.

[Professional Engineer]

Cool post. I was browsing some NasaKids links recently and found the Radio Jove project.

[LibWhacker]

It would've been cool listening to this the night Shoemaker-Levy slammed into Jupiter. Don't know if you would've heard anything, but it would've been cool.

[Teacher317]

Good GOOD mornin' to ya it's sunny and 76 out there in tha big city caller number 7 gets a set of tickets to the Chuckle Hut to see Gallagher3 and listen for Big Jim with SkyTraffic for a chance to win a $5 off coupon at Crazy Eddie's his prices are insaaaaane and speaking of insane, how about them Yankees

[GeronL]

those aliens have funny ways, repeating earth sounds to us is genius.

[scab4faa]

Self-bump

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

from 2004, just a ping message update.

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