NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center –
August 8, 2019 -- A new Hubble Space Telescope view of Jupiter, taken on June
27, 2019, reveals the giant planet's trademark Great Red Spot, and a more
intense color palette in the clouds swirling in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere
than seen in previous years. The colors, and their changes, provide important
clues to ongoing processes in Jupiter's atmosphere.
The bands are created by differences in
the thickness and height of the ammonia ice clouds. The colorful bands, which
flow in opposite directions at various latitudes, result from different
atmospheric pressures. Lighter bands rise higher and have thicker clouds than the
darker bands.
Among the most striking features in the
image are the rich colors of the clouds moving toward the Great Red Spot, a
storm rolling counterclockwise between two bands of clouds. These two cloud
bands, above and below the Great Red Spot, are moving in opposite directions.
The red band above and to the right (northeast) of the Great Red Spot contains
clouds moving westward and around the north of the giant tempest. The white
clouds to the left (southwest) of the storm are moving eastward to the south of
the spot.
All of Jupiter's colorful cloud bands in
this image are confined to the north and south by jet streams that remain
constant, even when the bands change color. The bands are all separated by
winds that can reach speeds of up to 400 miles (644 kilometers) per hour.
On the opposite side of the planet, the
band of deep red color northeast of the Great Red Spot and the bright white
band to the southeast of it become much fainter. The swirling filaments seen
around the outer edge of the red super storm are high-altitude clouds that are
being pulled in and around it.
The Great Red Spot is a towering
structure shaped like a wedding cake, whose upper haze layer extends more than
3 miles (5 kilometers) higher than clouds in other areas. The gigantic
structure, with a diameter slightly larger than Earth's, is a high-pressure
wind system called an anticyclone that has been slowly downsizing since the
1800s. The reason for this change in size is still unknown.
A worm-shaped feature located below the
Great Red Spot is a cyclone, a vortex around a low-pressure area with winds
spinning in the opposite direction from the Red Spot. Researchers have observed
cyclones with a wide variety of different appearances across the planet. The
two white oval-shaped features are anticyclones, like small versions of the
Great Red Spot.
Another interesting detail is the color
of the wide band at the equator. The bright orange color may be a sign that
deeper clouds are starting to clear out, emphasizing red particles in the
overlying haze.
The new image was taken in visible light
as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy program, or OPAL. The program
provides yearly Hubble global views of the outer planets to look for changes in
their storms, winds and clouds.
Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed
Jupiter when the planet was 400 million miles from Earth, when Jupiter was near
"opposition" or almost directly opposite the Sun in the sky.
No comments:
Post a Comment