Polar aurorae are a direct consequence of the dynamics of the plasma in the magnetosphere. The sources of mass and energy differ between the Earth's and Jupiter's magnetospheres, hence leading to fundamentally distinct auroral morphologies and very different responses to solar wind variations. Here we report on the imaging of all development stages of spectacular auroral events at Jupiter, called dawn storms, including their initiation on the night side. Our results reveal surprising similarities with auroral substorms at Earth, which stem from explosive magnetospheric reconfigurations. These findings demonstrate that, whatever their sources, mass and energy do not always circulate smoothly in planetary magnetospheres. Instead they often accumulate until the magnetospheres reconfigure and generate substorm-like responses in the planetary aurorae.