Just as charged particles trapped in the Van Allen belts produce auroras on Earth when they crash into

the uppermost atmosphere near the magnetic poles, so do they also on Jupiter. Cameras on the Voyager
and Galileo spacecraft succeeded in imaging ultraviolet auroral arcs on the nightside of Jupiter. The
Hubble Space Telescope also captured images of far-ultraviolet auroras on the planet’s dayside. In
addition, Earth-based observations have recorded infrared emissions from H3+ ions at both poles and
imaged the associated polar auroras. Evidently protons (hydrogen ions, H+) from the magnetosphere
spiral into the planet’s ionosphere along magnetic field lines, forming the excited H3+ ions as they crash
into the atmosphere dominated by molecular hydrogen. The resulting emission produces the auroras. It
is observable from Earth at wavelengths where methane in Jupiter’s atmosphere has very strong
absorption bands and thereby suppresses the background from reflected sunlight. The relation of the
ultraviolet and infrared auroras, the detailed interaction of Io’s flux tube with Jupiter’s ionosphere, and
the possibility that ions from the torus of plasma around Io’s orbit are impinging on the planet’s
atmosphere remain active topics of research.

(Source: britannica.com)