“Juno’s close flybys of the cloud tops allowed us to see something surprising – smaller, shallower flashes [of lightning] – originating at much higher altitudes in Jupiter’s atmosphere than previously assumed possible,” said Heidi Becker, Juno’s Radiation Monitoring Investigation lead at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

For these superbolts of lightning—which are up to 1,000 times as powerful as lightning on Earth—to occur at those higher altitudes, there needs to be some way to keep water in its liquid state.

Unlike Earth’s weather system, which is driven by water, Jupiter’s is driven by both water and ammonia.

Due to all of the ammonia in Jupiter’s atmosphere, water can reach much higher altitudes before freezing.

“At these altitudes, the ammonia acts like an antifreeze, lowering the melting point of water ice and allowing the formation of a cloud with ammonia-water liquid,” Becker said in the NASA announcement.

This is because Becker and her colleagues theorize that hail develops at the same high altitudes as the superbolts, and subsequently falls back deep into the lower atmosphere?