Two opposing jet streams set up the Jupiter storm
The cover photo says it all – what a swirling mystery Jupiter’s Great Red Spot continues to be for scientists.
Not that Jupiter itself isn’t a bit strange. It really has no solid ground … composed of mostly liquid Helium at it’s core and varying states of Helium and Hydrogen as we get closer to the “atmosphere”. The reason atmosphere is in quotes here is that there really isn’t a good boundary between the liquid and gaseous states as observed by the Galileo atmospheric probe in 1995, as well as other supporting data obtained from the Voyager, Cassini, New Horizons and Hubble missions and from land based telescopes as well.
The Great Red Spot itself has been fairly stable in position, rotates counter-clockwise (opposite Earth’s hurricanes) and as we all know, is extremely large. Not a storm I’d want to be in for sure.
Take a look at the article below, as it certainly worth the time (and a share) …
Date: 5 Mar 1979
This close-up of swirling clouds around Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was taken by Voyager 1. It was assembled from three black and white negatives.
Voyager 1 and 2 each provided unprecedented information about the Jovian atmosphere, system of rings and moons.
During the Jupiter leg of their journeys, Voyager 1 and 2 each explored the giant planet, its magnetosphere and moons in far greater detail than had the Pioneer spacecraft that preceded it. Both spacecraft also used Jupiter’s gravity as a springboard to Saturn and beyond.
The spacecraft returned spectacular photos of the entire Jovian system, and time-lapse movies made from its images of Jupiter showed how the planet had changed between the Voyager visits.
Credit: NASA/JPL
Source: solarsystem.nasa.gov
Aug. 4, 2015
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot: A Swirling Mystery
The largest and most powerful hurricanes ever recorded on Earth spanned over 1,000 miles across with winds gusting up to around 200 mph. That’s wide enough to stretch across nearly all U.S. states east of Texas. But even that kind of storm is dwarfed by the Great Red Spot, a gigantic storm in Jupiter. There, gigantic means twice as wide as Earth.
With tumultuous winds peaking at about 400 mph, the Great Red Spot has been swirling wildly over Jupiter’s skies for the past 150 years—maybe even much longer than that. While people saw a big spot in Jupiter as early as they started stargazing through telescopes in the 1600s, it is still unclear whether they were looking at a different storm. Today, scientists know the Great Red Spot is there and it’s been there for a while, but they still struggle to learn what causes its swirl of reddish hues.
Understanding the Great Red Spot is not easy, and it’s mostly Jupiter’s fault. A planet a thousand times as big as Earth, Jupiter consists mostly of gas. A liquid ocean of hydrogen surrounds its core, and the atmosphere consists mostly of hydrogen and helium. That translates into no solid ground like we have on Earth to weaken storms. Also, Jupiter’s clouds obstruct clear observations of its lower atmosphere. While some studies of Jupiter have investigated areas in its lower atmosphere, orbiting probes and telescopes studying the Great Red Spot can only see clouds scattered high in the atmosphere.
…… Studies predict Jupiter’s upper atmosphere has clouds consisting of ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide, and water. Still, scientists don’t know exactly how or even whether these chemicals react to give colors like those in the Great Red Spot. Plus, these compounds make up only a small part of the atmosphere. “We’re talking about something that only makes up a really tiny portion of the atmosphere,” Simon said. “That’s what makes it so hard to figure out exactly what makes the colors that we see.”
…… With the Great Red Spot and other reddish parts of Jupiter, coloring may result from multiple factors, as opposed to just ammonium hydrosulfide. “Ideally, what you’d want is a mixture with the right components of everything that you see in Jupiter’s atmosphere at the right temperature, and then irradiate it at the right levels,” Simon said. Ultimately, Simon and Loeffler said solving the Great Red Spot’s mystery will take more experiments combining chemicals under the right temperatures, light exposures and radiation doses. “What we are trying to do is design lab experiments more realistic to Jupiter’s atmosphere,” Simon said.
Last Updated: Aug. 5, 2015
Editor: Karl Hille
To read the full article, please visit the source at: Nasa.gov