Jupiter: Turmoil from Below, Battering from Above

[Whitters]

RED vs. RED JR: Two of the biggest storms in the solar system are converging for a--what?  A gentle bump?  A ferocious collision?  No one knows exactly what will happen in July when Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its younger cousin Red Jr. get together.  Astronomers are monitoring their convergence, and you can see one of the best recent images--in stereo--on SpaceWeather.com .

[Rick]

Jupiter proved ready for its close-up when the New Horizons spacecraft flew by earlier this year.

New images and analyses of the massive planet have revealed surprising details of its atmosphere, rings and moons.

They include never-seen-before observations of Jupiter: lightning displays at the poles, mysterious clumps embedded in its rings, and the first movie of volcanic eruption on its moon Io.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7037366.stm

[mickw]

Two giant plumes erupted recently on Jupiter, moving faster than any other Jovian feature and leaving global streaks of red cloud particles in their wake.
New analyses of the March 2007 outbursts suggest internal heat plays a significant role in generating such weather patterns.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080125/sc_space/giantstormseruptonjupiter

Clouds - We are not alone....................................   

[mickw]

Newfound glowing spots on Jupiter seem unexpectedly to come from electron beams whipping around the giant planet's volcanic moon Io.
Io is the most volcanic body in the solar system, with its entire surface likely made up of lava from the moon's hundreds of volcanoes.
Io also causes glowing spots hundreds of miles across on its mother planet that are similar to the aurora borealis or northern lights in the Northern Hemisphere on Earth.

More:  http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080317-io-spots.html

[Mike]

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/23/

[Ian]

More info here http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/23/

Interestingly, this features the work of Christopher Go, of the Philippines. He's an amateur astronomer who has regularly posted stunning images of Jupiter to QCUIAG for a number of years.

[Mike]

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/07/17/jupiters-red-spot-chews-up-and-spits-out-a-storm/

[MarkS]

Nice picture of recent red spot activity here:
http://www.sciam.com/gallery_directory.cfm?photo_id=4BAC1399-9BEC-4955-4BC951BE0D91E9D8

[Rick]

Astronomers using the Keck Observatory in Hawaii have captured the aftermath of an object slamming into Jupiter - material thrown up into the atmosphere by the impact and posing for the camera in the infrared.

The event was spotted by amateur OZ astronomer Anthony Wesley in Murrumbateman at around 13:30 GMT on Sunday, New Scientist explains. He spread word of his discovery via email, and US scientists - including Paul Kalas of the University of California Berkeley, Michael Fitzgerald of Lawrence Livermore National Lab and UCLA, and Glenn Orton of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab - soon got wind of it.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/21/jupiter_impact/

[Rick]

The planet Jupiter shows evidence of having being hit by a large object, either a comet or asteroid.

A dark mark has appeared in its atmosphere towards the southern pole.

It was first seen by Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley on 19 July, and was then quickly followed up by others including the US space agency.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8161723.stm

[Rick]

The dark bruise that appeared suddenly near the south pole of Jupiter several days ago, likely as the result of an impact by a comet or asteroid, is as big as the Pacific Ocean, astronomers report.

The dark spot was first noticed by chance by amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley in Australia on Sunday, July 19.

The blemish is thought to be the result of an impact similar to that of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which pummeled the gas giant 15 years ago.

More: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090721-jupiter-impact.html

(Thanks, Mick, for the pointer -- Rick)

[mickw]

The unexpected impact of some space object with Jupiter, creating a dark bruise in the gas giant's atmosphere, proved a tempting enough target for scientists to put a hold on testing out the revamped Hubble Space Telescope and use its new camera to capture an image of the rare event.

The plan, first reported by Spaceflight Now, was carried out yesterday so that astronomers could use the 19-year-old Hubble's unique capabilities to get an image of the spot, probably caused by a comet, before too many days had passed since the impact and Jupiter's atmosphere distorted the shape.

More:   http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090724-hubble-jupiter-spot.html

[Rick]

NASA describes the image as the "sharpest visible-light picture yet" of the atmospheric debris from the prang, first spotted by amateur Oz astronomer Anthony Wesley and subsequently captured in the infrared by the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/27/hubble_jupiter/

[mickw]

A giant cloud belt in the southern half of Jupiter has apparently disappeared according to new photos of the planet taken by amateur astronomers.

The new Jupiter photos, taken May 9 by Australian astronomer Anthony Wesley, reveal that the huge reddish band of clouds that make up the planet's Southern Equatorial Belt has faded from view.

Jupiter's trademark Great Red Spot, a massive storm that could fit two Earths inside, is typically found along the edges of the planet's Southern Equatorial Belt. When the southern cloud belt fades from view, the Great Red Spot stands out along with Jupiter's Northern Equatorial Belt of clouds in telescope views

More:   Cloud

[Rocket Pooch]

Wow how amazing it that!!!!

Would be good ot get a peek this weekend but its not well placed at all

[mickw]

The dark brown stripe of clouds on Jupiter that disappeared from view last year is reappearing.

Astronomers confirmed Wednesday (Nov. 24) that the gas giant's South Equatorial Belt (SEB), one of two distinctive dark stripes formed by the planet's cloud chemistry and winds, is coming back. They attributed the return of the view to a shift in Jupiter's cloud cover.

More:   SEB

[Rick]

Jupiter: Turmoil from Below, Battering from Above

Jupiter, the mythical god of sky and thunder, would certainly be pleased at all the changes afoot at his namesake planet. As the planet gets peppered continually with small space rocks, wide belts of the atmosphere are changing color, hotspots are vanishing and reappearing, and clouds are gathering over one part of Jupiter, while dissipating over another. The results were presented today by Glenn Orton, a senior research scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting in Reno, Nev.

"The changes we're seeing in Jupiter are global in scale," Orton said. "We've seen some of these before, but never with modern instrumentation to clue us in on what's going on. Other changes haven't been seen in decades, and some regions have never been in the state they're appearing in now. At the same time, we've never seen so many things striking Jupiter. Right now, we're trying to figure out why this is all happening."

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-328

[Rick]

Jupiter's Red Spot is Likely a Sunburn, Not a Blush

The ruddy color of Jupiter's Great Red Spot is likely a product of simple chemicals being broken apart by sunlight in the planet's upper atmosphere, according to a new analysis of data from NASA's Cassini mission. The results contradict the other leading theory for the origin of the spot's striking color -- that the reddish chemicals come from beneath Jupiter's clouds.

The results are being presented this week by Kevin Baines, a Cassini team scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, at the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Science Meeting in Tucson, Arizona.

Baines and JPL colleagues Bob Carlson and Tom Momary arrived at their conclusions using a combination of data from Cassini's December 2000 Jupiter flyby and laboratory experiments.

In the lab, the researchers blasted ammonia and acetylene gases -- chemicals known to exist on Jupiter -- with ultraviolet light, to simulate the sun's effects on these materials at the extreme heights of clouds in the Great Red Spot. This produced a reddish material, which the team compared to the Great Red Spot as observed by Cassini's Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS). They found that the light-scattering properties of their red concoction nicely matched a model of the Great Red Spot in which the red-colored material is confined to the uppermost reaches of the giant cyclone-like feature.

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4372

[Rick]

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.

More from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre

[Rick]

Jupiter Descending

If you did fall into Jupiter's atmosphere in a submarine, what would it actually look like? What would you see before you melted or burned up?

More: http://what-if.xkcd.com/139/