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Artist's rendering of the invisible lines of Jupiter's magnetic field. Jupiter's enormous magnetic field is nearly 20, 000 times as powerful as Earth's field. The field dominates a vast area of space called the magnetosphere, where it traps swarms of charged particles. Some of these particles become trapped in an intense radiation belt near the planet, creating a hazard for visiting spacecraft. The Jovian magnetosphere has a tadpole shape, ballooning outward 600, 000 to 2 million miles (1 to 3 million kilometers) toward the sun and tapering into a long tail that extends more than 600 million miles (1 billion kilometers) outward from Jupiter, to as far as Saturn's orbit. Jupiter's magnetic field also channels charged particles into the upper atmosphere near the poles, creating brilliant auroras.
