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Best view ever of Jupiter's Great Red Spot coming up in the next week:

On July 10/11, 2017, the Juno spacecraft will once again dip down over Jupiter’s cloud tops, screaming past the planet at over 200,000 kilometers per hour. It’s done this before, six times in fact, but this one will be different: It’ll pass directly over the Great Red Spot.

That’s a big deal. Literally! The iconic Great Red Spot is a vast storm in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere. Besides the wide belts and zones (darker and lighter stripes parallel to the planet’s equator), the Red Spot is the most obvious feature in Jupiter’s clouds. That’s because of its color (which varies from salmon pink to deep red over time), but also because of its ridiculously huge size: It spans 16,000 kilometers east to west. That’s wider than our entire planet Earth!

Bad Astronomy
 
Behold Jupiter's Great Red Spot
By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
  • 13 July 2017

_96916743_jasonmajor.jpg
Image copyrightNASA/SWRI/MSSS/JASON MAJOR
Image captionJason Major, a JunoCam citizen scientist and a graphic designer from Warwick, Rhode Island, took the raw images from the probe to create this perspective
An American space agency probe has returned the most detailed pictures ever of Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

The Juno spacecraft passed over the giant storm on Monday as it continued with its series of close passes of the gaseous world.

The pictures of the spot reveal the intricate nature of its swirls which encompass a region bigger than Earth.

Juno's instruments all acquired data during the pass which should now provide fresh insight on the storm.

_96916740_geraldeichstadt_seandoran2.jpg
Image copyrightNASA/SWRI/MSSS /GERALD EICHSTÄDT / SEÁN DORAN
Image captionThe raw images that come down from Juno are a lot more washed out. Citizen scientists like to accentuate the colours and contrast to highlight features that might otherwise be overlooked
It has been a particularly long-lived feature on Jupiter, but there is evidence that the 16,350-km-wide oval has actually been shrinking of late.

_96916745_kevingill.jpg
Image copyrightNASA/SWRI/MSSS/KEVIN GILL
Image captionThe Great Red Spot has persisted for centuries. Scientists are keen to learn its secrets and Juno provides the key
"For hundreds of years scientists have been observing, wondering and theorising about Jupiter's Great Red Spot," Scott Bolton, Juno principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in a Nasa statement.

"Now we have the best pictures ever of this iconic storm. It will take us some time to analyse all the data from not only JunoCam, but Juno’s eight science instruments, to shed some new light on the past, present and future of the Great Red Spot."

Scientists describe the storm as something similar to a hurricane - but there are significant differences between that kind of storm on Earth and what we see at Jupiter. Many behaviours are not the same.

For example, hurricanes on Earth quickly lose energy when they leave the ocean surface and pass over land - but on Jupiter, there is no land. Indeed, researchers are not even sure there exists any kind of hard surface under the planet's clouds.

This could be an explanation for why the spot has persisted for centuries. But Juno hopes to resolve such puzzles.

It has the instrumentation to determine the precise chemical composition of the oval's clouds, to sense their temperature and structure, and to measure how deep they go. There is a suspicion that the spot has very deep roots.

etc

Full story http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-40594126
 
Amazing images of Jupiter..or is it a pizza with extra pepperoni?

Jupiter's winds run deep into the planet
By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent
  • 8 March 2018

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Image copyrightNASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM
Image captionThe central cyclone at the planet's north pole is encircled by eight other storms
We are finally getting a look inside the biggest planet in the Solar System - Jupiter. And it is very strange.

The American space agency's Juno probe has been studying the variations in the pull of gravity as it flies across the giant world's banded atmosphere.

These measurements betray the movement of mass within Jupiter, and that gives scientists clues to its structure.

The latest data reveals the activity of those familiar, colourful, wind-sculpted bands extends 3,000km down.

etc

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43317566
 
Horizon - Jupiter Revealed

Latest findings from the Juno mission. They think they know what it's made of under the cloud cover. Some surprising finds - one of which is that hydrogen turns to a sort of liquid metal under extreme pressure, & there's a layer of it on Jupiter. More topics - missing water, inner core.

It's a huge object more than 2½ times more massive than all the rest of the planets added together, with fearsome magnetic field & radiation which knackered an earlier mission. Juno had to be built like a tank to withstand the forces & is the largest craft ever launched into space.

On iplayer for 29 days.
 
An object hit Jupiter yesterday:
Story with pics

It looks like a little dot in the photos, but this is Jupiter we're talking about, so it must have been massive even to make a mark like that. Just be glad it hit the Solar System's biggest planet and not the small blue one.
 
As immense as Jupiter is, it's a good thing for us it wasn't any bigger.
Jupiter Is So Huge, Our Solar System Almost Had Two Suns

About half of all the star systems in the galaxy are made of pairs or triplets of stars.

Our Solar System features just one star, the Sun, and a host of (relatively) small planets. But it was almost not the case, and Jupiter got right on the edge of becoming the Sun's smaller sibling.

Jupiter, the biggest planet in the Solar System, is by far the largest. If you added up the masses of all the other planets, it wouldn't even come to half of the mass of Jupiter.

You could eliminate every single planet in the Solar System except Jupiter, and you would basically still have... the Solar System.

I'm not trying to make you feel insignificant, but the mass of Earth is just a rounding error when adding up all the stuff orbiting the Sun.

Jupiter is so immensely big that it's right on the cusp of becoming a star in its own right. If it were about 20 times bigger than it is, it would be heavy enough that the pressures and temperatures in the core would be high enough to ignite nuclear fusion and start Jupiter on the path to stardom (albeit as a small, barely-there red dwarf, but it would still count).

Now I get that "20 times" sounds like a big deal. If you were 20 times bigger than you are now, that would be a slightly concerning medical issue. But in the astronomy world that's peanuts. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.sciencealert.com/jupiter-is-so-huge-our-solar-system-almost-had-two-suns
 
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Doesn't the two suns thing happen at the end of Arthur C. Clarke's 2010?
 
Latest pics from Ganymede

See the First Images NASA’s Juno Took As It Sailed by Ganymede​

Ganymede
This image of Ganymede was obtained by the JunoCam imager during Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of the icy moon.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Full image and caption
The spacecraft flew closer to Jupiter’s largest moon than any other in more than two decades, offering dramatic glimpses of the icy orb.

The first two images from NASA Juno’s June 7, 2021, flyby of Jupiter’s giant moon Ganymede have been received on Earth. The photos – one from the Jupiter orbiter’s JunoCam imager and the other from its Stellar Reference Unit star camera – show the surface in remarkable detail, including craters, clearly distinct dark and bright terrain, and long structural features possibly linked to tectonic faults.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/see-the-first-images-nasa-s-juno-took-as-it-sailed-by-ganymede
 
There may not be life on Venus but there may be on Jupiter.

"There is no life on Venus but there could be on Jupiter.

That's according to a new scientific study which says the amount of water within the clouds of Venus is too low for life to thrive.

But Jupiter's clouds have the right water conditions to permit Earth-like life, according to researchers."

https://www.bbc.com/newsround/57643440
 
There may not be life on Venus but there may be on Jupiter.

"There is no life on Venus but there could be on Jupiter.

That's according to a new scientific study which says the amount of water within the clouds of Venus is too low for life to thrive.

But Jupiter's clouds have the right water conditions to permit Earth-like life, according to researchers."

https://www.bbc.com/newsround/57643440
The sheer amount of hard radiation on Jupiter may make that impossible.
 
... Jupiter's enormous, dramatic aurora can explain the heat in the polar regions, but for that warmth to reach the equator would require incredibly dramatic mixing, which modelling studies haven't been able to support.

"There's no real excuse for it to be so hot," said Dr James O'Donoghue from Boston University, the paper's first author. ...
Update ... Recent research indicates Jupiter's polar aurorae are indeed the probable source of the upper atmosphere's heating.
International Observatories Assemble To Solve “Energy Crisis” on Jupiter

Sitting more than five times the distance from the Sun as Earth, Jupiter is not expected to be particularly warm. Based on the amount of sunlight received, the average temperature in the planet’s upper atmosphere should be about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit or a chilly minus 73 Celsius. Instead, the measured value soars to around 800 degrees Fahrenheit or 426 Celsius. The source of this extra heat has remained elusive for 50 years, causing scientists to refer to the discrepancy as an “energy crisis” for the planet.

Recently, an international team assembled observations from a trio of observatories — NASA’s Juno spacecraft, W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi, and the Hisaki satellite from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) — to discover the likely source of Jupiter’s thermal boost.

“We found that Jupiter’s intense aurora, the most powerful in the solar system, is responsible for heating the entire planet’s upper atmosphere to surprisingly high temperatures,” said James O’Donoghue of the JAXA Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Sagamihara, Japan. O’Donoghue began the research while at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and is lead author of a paper about this research published in the journal Nature. ...
FULL STORY:
https://scitechdaily.com/international-observatories-assemble-to-solve-energy-crisis-on-jupiter/

PUBLISHED RESEARCH REPORT:
“Global upper-atmospheric heating on Jupiter by the polar aurorae”
J. O’Donoghue, L. Moore, T. Bhakyapaibul, H. Melin, T. Stallard, J. E. P. Connerney and C. Tao,
4 August 2021, Nature.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03706-w

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03706-w
 
Inexplicable global warming on Jupiter?
Must be all those peaky humans, with their fossil fuel emissions!
 
The sheer amount of hard radiation on Jupiter may make that impossible.
Could tardigrades live in the atmosphere of Jupiter? I mean, if they got there by a crashed spacecraft (like what happened on the moon).

I'm not suggesting that as a feasible possibility, just wondering if they could cope with the radiation.
 
Could tardigrades live in the atmosphere of Jupiter? I mean, if they got there by a crashed spacecraft (like what happened on the moon).

I'm not suggesting that as a feasible possibility, just wondering if they could cope with the radiation.
I suspect not. I suspect they'd drift down through the atmosphere until they were crushed in whatever is in Jupiter's core. But they'd have nothing to eat in Jupiter's atmosphere anyway. They could only be in torpor.
 
I suspect not. I suspect they'd drift down through the atmosphere until they were crushed in whatever is in Jupiter's core. But they'd have nothing to eat in Jupiter's atmosphere anyway. They could only be in torpor.
They might survive the hard radiation, though. Until they were crushed.
 
Amateur and professional astronomers witnessed and recorded a substantial impactor exploding in Jupiter's upper atmosphere. Such impacts aren't all that rare, but recordings are.
Something Large Just Smashed Into Jupiter

Poor old Jupiter. It's just hanging out there, being a gas giant, shepherding trojans, minding its own business, and boom. Smacked upside by a stray space rock.

That's not necessarily unusual for Jupiter, actually. What is unusual is that someone happens to be looking and filming at just the right time - and this month, that happened, with sky-watchers around the globe catching an explosion in the planet's upper atmosphere.

On 13 September 2021, at 22:39 UT, amateur astronomers recorded the bright flash of what appeared to be a Jupiter impact - namely Harald Paleske from Germany, who was recording the shadow of Io as it passed in front of the planet, and José Luis Pereira from Brazil.

Others included Simone Galelli in Italy, and Jean-Paul Arnould and Michel Jacquesson in France. Thibaut Humbert, Stéphane Barré, Alexis Desmougin and Didier Walliang of the Société Lorraine d'Astronomie in France also managed to film the putative impact. ...
FULL STORY (With Video): https://www.sciencealert.com/something-large-just-smacked-into-jupiter
 
What lies beneath Io.

CHICAGO — An entire ocean of liquid magma, or maybe a hot heart of solid metal, may lurk in Io’s underworld.

The surface of Jupiter’s innermost moon is covered in scorching lava lakes and gored by hundreds of active volcanoes, some spitting molten rock dozens of kilometers high (SN: 8/6/14). Over the years, the moon’s restless, mesmerizing hellscape has attracted the attention of many planetary scientists (SN: 5/3/22).

Now, researchers are digging into the nature of Io’s infernal interior to explain what is driving the spectacular volcanism on the moon’s fiery surface. “It’s the most volcanically active place in the solar system,” says planetary scientist Samuel Howell of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “But it’s not really clear where that energy comes from.” ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/io-magma-ocean-hot-metal-core-jupiter?
 
Io is different to all the other objects in the outer Solar System; unlike the other moons and asteroids, it doesn't have a thick outer layer of water ice, and instead it has a rocky surface probably overlaying a metallic core. This makes Io the most important source of non-ice resources in the outer system. Trouble is, Io is embedded in the Jupiter radiation belt, making it too dangerous for human miners. If this moon is ever going to produce any useful ore, the mining activity will need to be carried out by remote-controlled robots.
 
How brightly did Jupiter shine?

THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS — A young, ultrabright Jupiter may have desiccated its now hellish moon Io. The planet’s bygone brilliance could have also vaporized water on Europa and Ganymede, planetary scientist Carver Bierson reported March 17 at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. If true, the findings could help researchers narrow the search for icy exomoons by eliminating unlikely orbits.

Jupiter is among the brightest specks in our night sky. But past studies have indicated that during its infancy, Jupiter was far more luminous. “About 10 thousand times more luminous,” said Bierson, of Arizona State University in Tempe.

That radiance would have been inescapable for the giant planet’s moons, the largest of which are volcanic Io, ice-shelled Europa, aurora-cowled Ganymede and crater-laden Callisto (SN: 12/22/22, SN: 4/19/22, SN: 3/12/15). The constitutions of these four bodies obey a trend: The more distant the moon from Jupiter, the more ice-rich its body is.

Bierson and his colleagues hypothesized this pattern was a legacy of Jupiter’s past radiance. The team used computers to simulate how an infant Jupiter may have warmed its moons, starting with Io, the closest of the four. During its first few million years, Io’s surface temperature may have exceeded 26° Celsius under Jupiter’s glow, Bierson said. “That’s Earthlike temperatures.” ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/jupiter-bright-moon-io-water
 
Exploring the Moons of Jupiter.

The European Space Agency (Esa) is set to launch a satellite to the planet Jupiter, one of the organisation's most ambitious missions ever.

The satellite will leave Earth on Thursday on an eight-year journey to reach the giant planet's major moons. There's good evidence that these icy worlds - Callisto, Europa and Ganymede - hold oceans of liquid water at depth. The Esa mission aims to establish whether the moons might also have the conditions needed to sustain life.

The project is known as the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice for short. Juice is not seeking to detect life - it will not be sending back pictures of alien fish. But it could help determine whether conditions in the moons' hidden oceans have at least a chance of supporting simple microbial organisms.

This isn't a crazy idea, says Prof Carole Mundell, the director of science at Esa.

"In every extreme environment on Earth, whether that's high acidity, high radioactivity, low temperature, high temperature - we find microbial life in some form," she told BBC News. "If you look at the (volcanic) vents at the bottom of Earth's oceans, these even look like alien worlds. There's no reason why that microbial life should not be able to exist elsewhere, if we have similar conditions. And it's those conditions that we want to study with Juice."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65254502
 
Amateur astronomers spot new impact on Jupiter

Jupiter just got smacked by a small celestial body, according to amateur astronomers.


The impact occurred at 1:45 a.m. Japan Standard Time on Aug. 29 (1645 GMT on Aug. 28).

MASA Planetary Log later shared footage showing a brief burst of light coming from Jupiter that was associated with an apparent comet or asteroid impact.

https://www.space.com/amateur-astronomers-jupiter-cosmic-collision

maximus otter
 
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