Jupiter | Universe Today

Scientists have expressed their concern that the Solar System may not be as stable as it seems. Happily orbiting the Sun, the eight planets (plus Pluto and other minor planets) appear to have a high degree of long-term gravitational stability. But Jupiter has a huge gravitational influence over its siblings, especially the smaller planets. It appears that the long-term prospects for the smallest planet are bleak. The huge gravitational pull of Jupiter seems to be bullying Mercury into an increasingly eccentric death-orbit, possibly flinging the cosmic lightweight into the path of Venus. To make things worse, there might be dire consequences for Earth…
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Robotic spacecraft can gather a lot of data, and sometimes it takes years to sort through all the information acquired. Case in point: The Galileo spacecraft orbited Jupiter from 1995-2003. One discovery made by this mission was an anomaly in Jupiter’s rings. For the most part, the rings fall into the standard model of ring formation where the ring particles are shepherded by the orbits of four of Jupiter’s moons; Adrastea, Metis, Amalthea and Thebe (closest to farthest.) But a faint outward protrusion of dust extends beyond the orbit of Thebe, and scientists were mystified why this was occurring.

But a new study of data from the Galileo mission has found that this extension results from the interplay of shadow and sunlight on dust particles that make up the rings.
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Question: Why Does Jupiter Have a Red Spot?

Answer: Jupiter is beautiful to look at, both in a backyard telescope and with the Hubble Space Telescope. Even in the smallest telescope you can see atmospheric bands across the planet, and its 4 largest moons orbiting around it. With larger telescopes you can see the famous Great Red Spot - a swirling storm larger than the Earth.

Astronomers have been observing the Great Red Spot for more than 300 years, so it's incredibly long lasting. But it is changing. In 2004, the Great Red Spot was only half the size it was a century earlier, reaching a total size of 40,000 km. At this current rate, astronomers think it will become circular by 2040.

Thanks to recent missions to Jupiter, like Galileo, Cassini and New Horizons, scientists are learning a tremendous amount about how the atmosphere on Jupiter works.

Hot gases in Jupiter's atmosphere are constantly swirling around, rising and falling. As cooler gas falls down through the atmosphere, the Coriolis force causes the region to start swirling. These eddies can last for a long time because there is no solid ground on Jupiter to create friction.

These eddies can move around and merge into one another, creating larger and larger storms, which last for longer periods. According to theories, several of these larger storms came together, combining their energy to create the long lived Great Red Spot.

We can see this process happening again with another spot on Jupiter called Oval BA. It was first discovered a few years ago when three white storms merged together. This new "Red Spot Jr." has been stable in the atmosphere of Jupiter for more than 6 years now. It and the larger Red Spot have even passed each other several times now, and not caused much damage.

Scientists think the Great Red Spot has its characteristic red color because the strength of the storm is digging down into Jupiter's atmosphere, bringing complex organic molecules to the high atmosphere.

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Jupiter is a spotty place. There's the aptly-named Great Red Spot – a large, long-lasting storm – that we all know and love, and new storms crop up every so often to create interesting features for astronomers both professional and amateur to study. The most recent discovery of new spots can only be seen in the UV, but they add a whole new level of complexity for scientists to chew on. Read more…

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Jupiter has a powerful magnetic field 20,000 times stronger than the Earth's. It is therefore of no surprise that the highly energetic and damaging particles flying around in the Earths Van Allen Belts can be found within Jupiter's magnetosphere too. But are the mechanisms energizing these particles the same for both planets? New research suggests that the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Earth may have more in common than previously thought…
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As a giant planet, Jupiter takes everything to the extreme. Even the weather. A ferocious storm raging across the cloud tops has surprised scientists: it's churning up material that was deeper down in the planet's atmosphere. And there's evidence that the planet's jet streams are generated by its own heat, and not just from the Sun.
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Remember when New Horizons sped past Jupiter on its way to Pluto. It kept its cameras rolling during the flyby, and captured hard drives full of data. Researchers have had a chance crunch through some of this data, and announced a series of discoveries this week: polar lightning storms, clumpy rings, volcanic eruptions on Io, and more.
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Last week we talked about Jupiter and we could sense right away it would be too much to handle. This week, we'll talk about Jupiter's moons - how many are there? What makes them so interesting? Is it true that the most likely place in the solar system to find life (other than Earth) is actually on one of Jupiter's moons? Hang on tight. We're going to cover a lot.

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Jupiter's Moons - Show notes and transcript

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Last week we talked about rubble, this week we're going to dig into the largest planet in the Solar System: Jupiter, but will it all just be hot gas? There's so much to talk about, we've decided to break this up into two shows. This week we're going to just talk about Jupiter, and then next week, we're going to cover its moons.

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Jupiter - Show notes and transcript

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We experience changing weather here on Earth. One day it's overcast, and then the next day has clear skies. Same goes for the other planets, it just happens on different timescales. The Hubble Space Telescope has been watching how the planet Jupiter's weather transforms over time - it happens surprisingly quickly.
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Although its primary target will be Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft is taking the time to do a little science along the way. During its recent Jupiter flyby, the spacecraft was able to test out its scientific instruments as a dress rehearsal for its final Pluto encounter. NASA held a big press conference this week, and released dozens of new images and scientific findings gathered by New Horizons.
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Even though New Horizon's Jupiter flyby happened weeks ago, scientists are only just starting to crunch through the data sent back. They're revealing better and better images of Jupiter, taken by the spacecraft's powerful instruments. The image attached to this story was taken using New Horizon's LEISA infrared camera. It's a false colour photograph - not what you'd actually see if you were looking at Jupiter - but the fine details in the image are impressive.
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New Horizons captured this image of Jupiter as it zipped past on February 27, 2007 receiving a gravity assisted velocity boost. This photograph was captured when the spacecraft was 3 million km (1.8 million miles), resolving objects as large as 15 km (9 miles) across.
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While NASA's New Horizon spacecraft was making its gravity assisted flyby past Jupiter, some friends back at home were watching to help give the science some perspective. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory gathered images of Jupiter for several days before the flyby, and the combined photographs were released today.
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NASA's New Horizons spacecraft got a big speed boost today, when it used Jupiter's gravity to give it a slingshot towards its final destination of Pluto. It didn't exactly skim the planet's surface, but New Horizons got as close as 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) to Jupiter.
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Recently I reported on a proposal that spacecraft should return to Jupiter's moon Europa to determine if it really has an ocean under its icy shell. Another group of scientists are lobbying for a return to Europa as well, as they feel it's one of the most likely places to find other life in the Solar System.
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Arizona State University professor Ronald Greeley thinks that NASA's next flagship mission to the outer planets should be sent to Europa, to help determine if the Jovian moon is a good place to search for life. Greeley presented his rationale at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.
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Guess who took this picture of Jupiter? Hubble? Keck? A well equipped amateur here on Earth? Nope, it was taken by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The picture was taken from orbit around Mars.
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Although New Horizons' main target is Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, it'll have plenty of opportunities to do some science along the way. Next up, Jupiter. The spacecraft is now just a few weeks away from its closest approach to the gas giant, where it'll capture some images but also receive a much needed speed boost.
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Jupiter's newly formed Red Spot Jr. is increasing in strength, according to new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. These latest measurements clock its windspeeds at 640 kph (400 mph); almost double the speeds recorded by the Voyager spacecraft when it observed one of the spot's parent storms in 1979. The increased windspeed probably dredged up deeper material from the planet, changing its colour from white to red, similar to the Great Red Spot.
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You might have seen better looking pictures of Jupiter before, but that's not the point. What matters is that this photograph was taken by the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft. It took the picture on September 4, 2006 when it was still 291 million km (181 million miles) away from Jupiter. Don't worry, the pictures will get much better. It'll make its closest approach on February 28, 2007, and see the giant planet with 125 times better resolution than this picture.
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Astronomers from UC Berkeley used the massive W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to capture this infrared image of Jupiter and its two massive storms: the Great Red Spot and the smaller Oval BA. The image was taken on July 20, using the telescope's adaptive optics system to sharpen the image. Scientists still aren't sure why the spots have turned red, but they think it might be that they dredge darker material up from deeper in the planet's atmosphere; when exposed to ultraviolet light from the Sun, this material turns red.
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Astronomers have been predicting the meetup for months; Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its newly formed "Red Spot Jr." were bound to have a close encounter. This high-resolution photo from the Gemini Observatory shows how they looked July 13, 2006. Although both are red in visible light, they look white because the image was captured in the near-infrared wavelength, which can reveal more details. Astronomers don't think anything dramatic is going to happen as the storms slip past each other this time around.
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Even though our Solar System's gas giants vary widely in size and mass, they do have something in common. Each planet is roughly 10,000 times more massive than the combined mass of all their moons. During planetary formation, rocky moons grew out of the solid material surrounding each planet. As these moons grew larger, leftover gas slowed them down, and they fell into the planet to be consumed. The moons we see today were the last ones to form around their parent planets, after the gas had dissipated.
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Jupiter's two red spots. Image credit: Christopher Go. Click to enlarge
Jupiter's well known Great Red Spot storm, and its newly formed Oval BA (aka Red Jr.) are about to sweep past each other, and astronomers aren't quite sure what's going to happen. The storms probably won't merge or tear each other apart, but their outer bands will rub against each other. Oval BA recently turned red, signifying its larger size and strength compared to the smaller white storms on Jupiter. Some astronomers think the encounter with the Great Red Spot will slow it down again, returning it to white.

The two biggest storms in the solar system are about to go bump in the night, in plain view of backyard telescopes.

Storm #1 is the Great Red Spot, twice as wide as Earth itself, with winds blowing 350 mph. The behemoth has been spinning around Jupiter for hundreds of years.

Storm #2 is Oval BA, also known as "Red Jr.," a youngster of a storm only six years old. Compared to the Great Red Spot, Red Jr. is half-sized, able to swallow Earth merely once, but it blows just as hard as its older cousin.

The two are converging. Closest approach: the 4th of July, according to Amy Simon-Miller of the Goddard Space Flight Center who has been monitoring the storms using the Hubble Space Telescope.

"There won't be a head-on collision," she says. "The Great Red Spot is not going to 'eat' Oval BA or anything like that." But the storms' outer bands will pass quite close to one another-and no one knows exactly what will happen.

Amateur astronomers are already monitoring the event. Christopher Go of the Philippines took the picture above using his 11-inch telescope on May 28th. "The distance between the storms is shrinking visibly every night," he says.

Similar encounters have happened before, notes JPL's Glenn Or ton, a colleague of Simon-Miller. "Oval BA and the Great Red Spot pass each other approximately every two years." Previous encounters in 2002 and 2004 were anti-climatic. Aside from some "roughing" around the edges, both storms survived apparently unaltered.

This time might be different. Simon-Miller and Orton think Red Jr. could lose its red color, ironically, by passing too close to the Great Red Spot.

Red Jr./Oval BA wasn't always red. For five years, 2000 to 2005, the storm was pure white like many other small "white ovals" circling the planet. In 2006 astronomers noticed a change: a red vortex formed inside the storm, the same color as the powerful Great Red Spot. This was a sign, researchers believed, that Oval BA was intensifying.

The color of the Great Red Spot itself is a mystery. A popular theory holds that the storm dredges up material from deep inside Jupiter's atmosphere, lifting it above the highest clouds where solar ultraviolet rays turn "chromophores" (color-changing compounds) red. A beefed-up Oval BA could suddenly do the same.

Bumping up against the Great Red Spot, however, could weaken Oval BA, turning it white again. Simon-Miller explains: "We believe the Great Red Spot will push Oval BA toward a southern jet stream, which is blowing against the oval's counterclockwise rotation." This would slow Oval BA's spin, possibly reversing the process that reddened it in the first place.

What will actually happen? "We'll see," she says. That's what telescopes are for.

Note to sky watchers: Jupiter is easy to find. It pops out of the evening twilight before any other star, surprisingly bright. Look for it halfway up the southeastern sky at sunset: sky map.

Original Source: NASA News Release

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