NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Discovers High-Speed Jet Stream above Jupiter’s Equator

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) have discovered a high-speed jet stream over Jupiter’s equator, above the main cloud deck. At a wavelength of 2.12 microns, observed at an altitude of about 12-21 miles (20-35 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, the researchers saw several wind shears, or areas where wind speed changes with height or distance, possibly them to observe tracking the jet. This image highlights several features around Jupiter’s equatorial zone that, between one rotation of the planet (10 hours), are clearly disturbed by the movement of the jet stream.

(NewsNation) — NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a new high-speed jet stream, stretching more than 3,000 miles wide over Jupiter’s equator above a central cloud stack.

“This is something that really surprised us,” said Ricardo Hueso of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, lead author of the paper explaining the findings. “What we’ve always seen as a hazy haze in Jupiter’s atmosphere now appears as sharp features that we can track along with the planet’s rapid rotation.”

The discovery of these jets provides valuable insight into the interactions between different layers in Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere, according to NASA.

The newly discovered jet stream moves at about 320 miles per hour, twice the wind speed of a Category 5 hurricane on Earth. It is located about 25 miles above the clouds, in Jupiter’s lower stratosphere.

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The Early Release Science Program – co-led by Imke de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley and Thierry Fouchet of the Paris Observatory – aims to capture images of Jupiter at 10-hour intervals, the equivalent of one Jupiter day, using four different filters. . Each filter has the unique ability to identify changes in small features at different heights in Jupiter’s atmosphere.

Although Jupiter and Earth are different in many ways – Jupiter is a gas giant and Earth is a temperate, rocky world – both planets have layered atmospheres. Other missions have observed infrared, visible, radio, and ultraviolet wavelengths of light, focusing on the lower and deeper layers of the planet’s atmosphere where large storms and clouds of ammonia ice have been found.

2023-10-23 04:44:00
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