Astronomers have used radio waves to peer further than ever before into Jupiter’s atmosphere to reveal some of the churning clouds of gas that produce the giant’s planet’s visible features. Other thing being shown by the radio map was ammonia-poor air is sinking into the planet.
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Astronomers have come up with map using the upgraded Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico.
The VLA maps show ammonia-rich gases rising into and forming the upper cloud layers: an ammonium hydrosulfide cloud at a temperature near minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 73 degrees Celsius) and an ammonia-ice cloud in the approximately minus 172 degree Fahrenheit cold air (minus 113 degrees Celsius).
As the researchers reported in Friday’s edition of the journal Science, they were able to conduct observations as deep as 60 miles (100 kilometers) beneath the cloud tops.
“We in essence created a three-dimensional map of ammonia gas in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which reveals upward and downward motions within the turbulent atmosphere”, said study leader Imke de Pater of the University of California at Berkeley in a public statement. The giant planet’s familiar light-colored zones and darker belts generally correlate well with the radio features, but the new radio images showed some radio-bright details unconnected to visible-light features.
This research, which appears in today’s Science, is a step toward understanding the inner workings of the monstrous planet that scientists believe was responsible for shaping the early solar system.
Transition from optical image of Jupiter to new radio map; numerous same features are visible.
The 1995 Galileo probe found massive amounts of ammonia on Jupiter, and Sault and his colleagues have zeroed-in on the ammonia in Jupiter.
Using the absorption of ammonia gas by the planet’s thermal radio emissions, the team was able to paint a picture of the depth and amount of ammonia in the planet’s atmosphere, which could help astronomers better understand its global circulation and cloud formation. The new observations are recorded in radio waves. And next month, the NASA Juno spacecraft will arrive and peer even deeper, into a suspected water layer, for clues to where and how the planet formed.
“We were able to make maps of Jupiter as seen at different radio wavelengths, then compare these to visible-light images made at almost the same times”, said co-author Dr. Bryan Butler, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.
These locations mark where an overlying layer of ammonia (NH3) is this, making the atmosphere more transparent at radio wavelengths and allowing a peek at depths where the temperature is higher and the pressure up to 8 times greater than at sea level on Earth. “Those trace really complex upwelling and downwelling motions there”.
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“The Very Large Array is about ten times more sensitive than it was before, so now we have a much higher spatial resolution”, said Imke de Pater, who led the new study. During 2014, her team measured radio emissions across the 4 to 18 gigahertz frequency range, creating a 3-dimensional picture of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.
