by Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers discovered never-before-seen structures and activity in Jupiter’s atmosphere above the Great Red Spot. These odd features appear to be caused by powerful atmospheric gravity waves.
The Great Red Spot is the largest storm in the solar system, twice the size of Earth, and is believed to have been raging for at least 300 years, according to NASA. The Great Red Spot winds at about 270 to 425 miles per hour (430 to 680 kilometers per hour), up to 3.5 times as fast as a tornado here on Earth.
But, despite the age, size and power of the storm, scientists suspected that Jupiter’s atmosphere above the Great Red Spot was not so interesting. However, these new observations by JWST’s Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec) instrument, which observed the great scarlet storm in July 2022, show that this assumption could not be more wrong.
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“We thought that this region, perhaps naively, would be really boring,” said team leader Henrik Melin from the University of Leicester in a statement. “It is, in fact, just as interesting as the northern lights, if not more so. Jupiter never ceases to amaze.”
What secrets does the Big Red Spot hide?
Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is the point at which the planet’s lower atmosphere meets its magnetic field. This results in bright northern and southern lights, powered by a bombardment of charged particles from the sun and fueled by sprays of volcanic material erupting from the Jovian moon Io, the most active volcanic body in the solar system.
Jupiter may be one of the brightest objects in the night sky on Earth, easily visible in clear skies. But, apart from its northern and southern lights, the atmosphere of the largest planet in the solar system glows only dimly, making it difficult for ground-based telescopes to see in detail through Earth’s atmosphere.
From JWST’s position a million miles from Earth, this $10 billion space telescope is unimpeded by our planet’s atmosphere. In addition, the JWST’s sensitivity in the infrared spectrum enables it to see the gas giant’s atmosphere in great detail, including the region beyond the Great Red Spot.
Aiming to find out if this region is somewhat obscured, Melin and her colleagues focused on it with NIRSpec, the JWST’s main instrument. This led to the discovery of various complex structures across JWST’s field of view, including dark arcs and bright spots.
Although incident sunlight is responsible for most of the light seen from Jupiter’s atmosphere, the team thinks there must be another one that causes changes in the shape and structure of the Jovian upper atmosphere.
“One way you can change this structure is with gravity waves—like waves crashing on a beach, creating ripples in the sand,” Melin explained. “These waves are generated deep in the turbulent lower atmosphere, around the Great Red Spot, and can travel upwards, changing the structure and emissions of the upper atmosphere.”
These gravitational waves are very different from gravitational waves, which are tiny ripples in space and time predicted by Albert Einstein in his 1915 theory of general relativity. Gravity waves travel through an atmosphere, relative to the fabric of spacetime as gravitational waves do.
These atmospheric gravity waves are also seen on Earth from time to time, but these Gravity waves are not much more intense and powerful than the same phenomenon that occurs over Jupiter.
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The team now hopes to follow up on the discovery of these newly discovered Red Spot features and their underlying complex wave patterns with the JWST. This future investigation could reveal how the waves flow through the gas giant’s upper atmosphere and how the observed structures disappear because of this.
The results are expected to help better understand the distribution of energy across Jupiter and could help support the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission.
JUICE was launched on 14 April 2023 and will reach Jupiter and its moons in 2031 when it will make detailed observations of Jupiter and its three large ocean moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
The team’s findings are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
