NASA’s Juno spacecraft looked deep beneath Jupiter’s Great Red Spot to study the structure of the great storm and its significance in the origin and evolution of the gas giant, with the hopes of increasing our understanding of other gas planets.
Juno’s latest measurements of the depths of the planet’s violent storms were published in Science on October 28, 2021, and its main subject is the Great Red Spot, a vortex wider than Earth. Such measurements were gathered with the use of microwave observations and gravity measurements to help scientists in characterizing the weather dynamics of Jupiter.
“Jupiter’s beauty is not just skin deep, and we are seeing, for the first time, the atmosphere in three dimensions,” says Scott Bolton, an astrophysicist at the Southwest Research Institute and principal investigator of the Juno mission.
Microwave observations revealed that the roots of the Great Red Spot extend to at least 240 kilometers below the cloud tops. Moreover, gravity measurements showed that the Great Red Spot has atmospheric roots extending no more than 500 kilometers below the cloud tops. Bolton said that its vortex probably fades gradually rather than having a sharp cut off.
Image: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, MSSS, Gerald Eichstadt and Justin Cowart