25/06/2024
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Using NASA/ESA/CSA’s James Webb Space Telescope, scientists have observed the region above Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot and discovered a variety of previously unseen features. The region, previously thought to be unremarkable in nature, is home to a variety of intricate structures and activities.
Jupiter’s atmosphere around the Great Red Spot (NIRCam and NIRSpec)
Jupiter is one of the brightest objects in the night sky and is easily seen on a clear night. Apart from the bright northern and southern lights in the planet’s polar regions, the glow of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is dim and therefore challenging for ground-based telescopes to pick out details in this region. However, Webb’s infrared sensitivity allows scientists to study Jupiter’s upper atmosphere above the infamous Great Red Spot in unprecedented detail.
Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is the interface between the planet’s magnetic field and the underlying atmosphere. Here you can see the bright and vivid images of the Northern and Southern Lights, fueled by the volcanic material ejected from Jupiter’s moon Io. Closer to the equator, however, the structure of the planet’s upper atmosphere is affected by incoming sunlight. Because Jupiter receives only 4% of the sunlight received by Earth, astronomers predicted that this region would be homogeneous in nature.
Jupiter’s atmosphere around the Great Red Spot (NIRSpec image)
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was observed in July 2022 by Webb’s Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec), using the instrument’s Integral Field Unit capabilities. The team’s Early Release Science observations sought to investigate whether this region was indeed dull, and the region above the iconic Great Red Spot was the target of Webb’s observations. The team was surprised to find that the upper atmosphere is home to a variety of complex structures, including dark arcs and bright spots, across the entire field of view.
“We thought, perhaps naively, that this region would be very boring,” says team leader Henrik Melin of the University of Leicester in Great Britain. “It’s actually just as interesting as the Northern Lights, if not more interesting. Jupiter never ceases to surprise.”
Although the light emitted from this region is driven by sunlight, the team suggests that there must be another mechanism that changes the shape and structure of the upper atmosphere.
“One way you can change this structure is through gravitational waves – similar to waves crashing onto a beach and creating ripples in the sand,” Henrik explains. “These waves are generated deep in the turbulent lower atmosphere, around the Great Red Spot, and can travel in height, changing the structure and emissions of the upper atmosphere.”
The team explains that these atmospheric waves can occasionally be seen on Earth, but they are much weaker than the waves Webb observed on Jupiter. They also hope to perform follow-up Webb observations of these intricate wave patterns in the future to investigate how the patterns travel in the planet’s upper atmosphere and to develop our understanding of the energy budget of this region and how its features change over time.
These findings could also support ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, Juice, which was launched on April 14, 2023. Juice will make detailed observations of Jupiter and its three large ocean moons – Ganymede, Callisto and Europa – using a remote sensing array. geophysical and in situ instruments. The mission will characterize these moons as both planetary objects and possible habitats, deeply investigate Jupiter’s complex environment, and study the broader Jupiter system as an archetype for gas giants throughout the universe.
These observations were made as part of the Early Release Science program #1373: ERS observations of the Jupiter system demonstrating the potential of JWST for solar system science (Co-PIs: I. de Pater, T. Fouchet).
“This ERS proposal dates from 2017,” says team member Imke de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley. ‘One of our objectives was to investigate why the temperature above the Great Red Spot appeared high, as recent observations with the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility revealed. However, our new data showed very different results.”
These results were published in Nature Astronomy.
More information
Webb is the largest and most powerful telescope ever launched into space. Under an international cooperation agreement, ESA provided the launch service for the telescope, using the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. In collaboration with partners, ESA was responsible for the development and qualification of Ariane 5 modifications for the Webb mission and for the procurement of the launch service by Arianespace. ESA also provided the workhorse spectrograph NIRSpec and 50% of the mid-infrared instrument MIRI, which was designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European institutes (the MIRI European Consortium) in collaboration with JPL and the University of Arizona.
Webb is an international partnership between NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
Publication on esawebb.org
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