10/29 05:48
Data collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft have allowed a deeper understanding of Jupiter’s strange and violent atmosphere, including the Great Red Spot, where it showed that this massive storm extends down much longer than expected.
Researchers said that the Great Red Spot extends between 350 and 500 kilometers below the clouds above Jupiter, based on measurements of ultra-short and gravitational waves obtained by “Juno”.
The data provides scientists studying the largest planet in the solar system, which can accommodate a thousand Earth globes, a three-dimensional description of its atmosphere.
The lines and some storms, such as the Great Red Spot, dominate the colorful appearance of the huge gaseous planet Jupiter, which is the fifth planet from the sun and has a diameter of about 143,000 km.
The Great Red Spot is a fierce storm with a width of about 16,000 km and a violent movement in the southern hemisphere of the planet. It is considered one of the wonders of the solar system and has existed for centuries, but scientists did not know much until now about what is happening below its surface, according to “Reuters”.
An instrument known as the ultrashort-wave radiometer enabled scientists to scrutinize what is going on beneath the clouds that surround Jupiter and study the structure of its powerful storms, which showed them that they extend very deep into the planet’s atmosphere for a much further distance than expected.
“Jupiter works in this kind of mysterious way that we’re revealing for the first time, because this is the first mission of Jupiter,” said Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in Texas and lead researcher on one of two studies on Jupiter published in the journal Science Thursday. You can look inside the planet,” he said, adding, “We see surprises.”
And about the Great Red Spot, Bolton said: “It’s the biggest storm in the entire solar system. There’s nothing like it.”
The Juno spacecraft has been in orbit around Jupiter since 2016 and has been collecting information about its atmosphere, structure and internal magnetic field.