E-Mail IMAGE: SwRI scientists studied the area imaged by Juno's UVS instrument on April 10, 2020, and determined that a large meteoroid had exploded in a bright fireball in Jupiter's upper atmosphere.... view more Credit: SwRI SAN ANTONIO -- Feb. 22, 2021 -- From aboard the Juno spacecraft, a Southwest Research Institute-led instrument observing auroras serendipitously spotted a bright flash above Jupiter's clouds last spring. The Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) team studied the data and determined that they had captured a bolide, an extremely bright meteoroid explosion in the gas giant's upper atmosphere. "Jupiter undergoes a huge number of impacts per year, much more than the Earth, so impacts themselves are not rare," said SwRI's Dr. Rohini Giles, lead author of a paper outlining these findings in