Prior to the new study, scientists assumed that the Jovian Southern and Northern Lights operate according to the same processes that produce strong aurora on Earth, but new data from Juno suggests this isn't the case.

Data collected by the probe's Ultraviolet Spectrograph (UVS) instrument shows that some funky things are going on in Jupiter's atmosphere, and that we have plenty to learn about how planets interact with their space environments in their own individual way.

The new study, headed by Barry Mauk from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, makes it clear that Jupiter's auroras are dancing to the beat of a different drummer.

"Jupiter's relatively steady main aurora has a power density that is so much larger than Earth's that it has been taken for granted that it must be generated primarily by the discrete auroral process," state the authors in the new study.

These models, says Denis Grodent, Director of the Space sciences, Technologies and Astrophysics Research (STAR) Institute at the University of Liège, were largely influenced by our present knowledge of Earth's aurora.