The Great Red Spot is the largest atmospheric vortex in the entire solar system. It was first documented in the 19th century, but may have already been seen by 17th century astronomers, who reported seeing spots on Jupiter through their telescopes. The storm is larger than our entire planet and has been spinning in the Jovian atmosphere for at least two centuries. Now we know how deep it is.
In two independent studies published in the journal Science, scientists have used NASA’s Juno spacecraft instruments to further probe Jupiter’s vortices and discovered their depth. It is much more accentuated than we thought.
The great storm that floats amid the clouds of the gas giant’s outer atmosphere show that it is shaped like a pancake or a thin lens, more than 16,000 kilometers wide and is ‘rooted’ deep in the atmosphere. of the gas giant. Much more than previously thought; it could even have ties to the interior of the planet.
” It’s much, much wider than it is deep . The surprising part was that most of the models that scientists have played with were much more shallow,” explains Scott Bolton, lead author of one of the studies and a co-author of the other. Bolton is the director of the space science and engineering division at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio and the principal investigator for the Juno mission.
Juno mission
The space probe has been in orbit around Jupiter since 2016, evaluating its chemical composition, measuring its gravitational and magnetic fields, and taking pictures of the planet and its many moons, which number up to 79 at last count.
One of the research teams measured the severity of the Great Red Spot to see if it left fingerprints in Jupiter’s gravitational field. That’s how it went. They detected fluctuations in Jupiter’s gravitational field, enough to control the depth of the storm: 500 km, higher than the distance from sea level to the International Space Station. And the big storm appears to be powered by jets that go much deeper, up to 3,000 kilometers , the scientists found. The surrounding atmospheric jets are six times deeper than we thought!
These jets are crucial in propelling the Great Red Spot, so the difference in depth adds to the mystery of how exactly the Jovian atmosphere can produce such spectacular storms.
The Great Red Spot usually looks brick red, hence its name, but its color varies over weeks and months to salmon, yellow, gray, and even white. Scientists believe that this variation in colors may be the result of sunlight changing the chemical composition of the ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide, and water clouds that it is likely made from.
Referencia: S. J. Bolton et al, Microwave observations reveal the deep extent and structure of Jupiter’s atmospheric vortices, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abf1015
Marzia Parisi et al, The depth of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot constrained by Juno gravity overflights, Science (2021). DOI: 10.1126/science.abf1396
