Astronomers have produced a remarkable new image of Jupiter, tracing the glowing regions of heat that lurk beneath the clouds of the gas giants.
The image was captured in infrared by the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, and is one of the planet’s sharpest observations from Earth.
To achieve resolution, the scientists used a technique called “lucky imaging” that eliminates the blurring effect of looking through Earth’s turbulent atmosphere.
This method involves acquiring multiple exposures of the lens and only keeping those segments of an image where that turbulence is minimal.
When all the shots are brought together in a mosaic, a clarity emerges that goes beyond simple exposure.
The researchers want to better understand what the gas giant’s climate systems do and sustain, and in particular the great storms that can be unleashed for decades and even centuries.
The study that produced this infrared image was led by the University of California at Berkeley. It was part of a joint observation program that involved the Hubble Telescope and the Juno spacecraft, which currently orbits Jupiter.
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