In 1955 Drs. Bernard Burke and Kenneth Franklin at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington discovered bursts of radio emissions from Jupiter. This discovery marked the birth of planetary radio astronomy and opened a new window into the study of planetary magnetospheres. Magnetospheres serve to protect planetary atmospheres from erosion by stellar winds and shield the surfaces of solid planets from most energetic charged particles. A radio search for exoplanetary magnetospheres may therefore assist in the search for potentially habitable planets.

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