{"id":15262,"date":"2016-09-02T20:59:54","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T12:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/juno-beams-back-dramatic-new-pictures-of-jupiter\/"},"modified":"2016-09-02T20:59:54","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T12:59:54","slug":"juno-beams-back-dramatic-new-pictures-of-jupiter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/juno-beams-back-dramatic-new-pictures-of-jupiter\/","title":{"rendered":"Juno beams back dramatic new pictures of Jupiter"},"content":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION<\/p>\n

\"The
The JunoCam instrument obtained this view on Aug. 27, about two hours before closest approach, when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (195,000 kilometers) away from the giant planet (i.e., for Jupiter\u2019s center). Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SwRI\/MSSS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft, making its first scientific run over Jupiter\u2019s poles Aug. 27, captured remarkable images of Jupiter\u2019s atmosphere, showing that the equatorial bands and zones familiar to even amateur astronomers completely disappear at high latitudes.<\/p>\n

Instead, the JunoCam instrument on the solar-powered spacecraft captured stunning images, released Friday, that show a more seemingly chaotic tapestry made up of huge hurricane-like storms, knots and swirls with hints that at least some structures rise above the surrounding cloud tops to cast shadows.<\/p>\n

An oblique view of the north polar region was captured by NASA\u2019s Cassini spacecraft during its trip to Saturn, but the Juno images are the sharpest yet of the little-understood region.<\/p>\n

Scott Bolton, the Juno principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, told CBS News the new images caught researchers by surprise when they finally reached Earth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were all sitting on the edge of our seat going, send us the first pole picture, quick, quick! We\u2019ve got to see it!\u201d he recalled. \u201cThen when it (came in) we were like, what?\u201d<\/p>\n

Juno is the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter\u2019s poles and the first equipped with instruments designed to probe the deep interior of the gas giant to help determine if the planet has a solid core, to shed light on how its intense magnetic field is generated and where that dynamo resides and to map out the structure of its atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Launched Aug. 5, 2011, Juno braked into a highly elliptical orbit around Jupiter\u2019s poles on July 4. At the end of July, the solar-powered spacecraft reached the high point of that initial 53-day orbit and began falling back toward Jupiter, making its first post-capture close approach Aug. 27.<\/p>\n

And unlike orbit insertion, Juno\u2019s full suite of instruments was operating the second time around, collecting six megabytes of data as the spacecraft passed within about 2,500 miles of Jupiter\u2019s cloudtops.<\/p>\n

\"Storm
Storm systems and weather activity unlike anything encountered in the solar system are on view in these color images of Jupiter\u2019s north polar region from NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft. Two versions of the image have been contrast-enhanced differently to bring out detail near the dark terminator and near the bright limb. The JunoCam instrument took the images to create this color view on August 27, when the spacecraft was about 48,000 miles (78,000 kilometers) above the polar cloud tops. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SwRI\/MSSS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The images captured by the JunoCam instrument show that between roughly 50 to 55 degrees to either side of the equator, orderly atmospheric bands rotate at different speeds, carrying along the Great Red Spot and numerous other more transient storms and eddies, many rivaling or exceeding the size of terrestrial planets.<\/p>\n

But the Juno images show those bands and zones merge into a much more complicated cloudscape at high latitudes that defies easy explanation. And unlike Saturn, Jupiter\u2019s poles show no signs of the hexagonal cloud structures seen in images of the ringed planet captured by NASA\u2019s Cassini spacecraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you get up there at some latitude, where the banding, the zones and belts, disappear, there\u2019s no evidence of it,\u201d Bolton said. \u201cIf you didn\u2019t know you were looking at Jupiter, you wouldn\u2019t know! In fact, it doesn\u2019t even look like a gas giant, right? You see features on it that look like you\u2019re looking at a surface. Very interesting to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, perhaps, Jupiter\u2019s polar regions exhibit pronounced differences \u201cin composition, temperature, structure, fundamentally different,\u201d Bolton said. \u201cIn hindsight, look at the Earth, our polar caps are totally different. Every place we look at has that. Why I thought Jupiter might be more recognizable from the poles than it is, I probably should have known better. But I think we were all surprised by seeing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Orbited by more than 50 moons, Jupiter circles the sun at an average distance of 484 million miles, it has a diameter of nearly 85,000 miles and it rotates on its axis every nine hours and 55 minutes. Eleven Earths would fit across its disk.<\/p>\n

Scientists believe a rocky core may exist deep in Jupiter\u2019s interior, surrounded by a sea of electrically conductive metallic hydrogen under mind-boggling pressure. Jupiter\u2019s fast rotation likely drives some sort of interior motion that generates the planet\u2019s powerful magnetic field. Bolton says the first batch of data from Juno hints at future answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve only got one pass (so far) and I can\u2019t tell you that we\u2019ve reached great conclusions, but \u2026 the magnetic field appeared to be surprisingly different than we expected at closest approach. I\u2019m still trying to figure out what the gravity field says about the interior, but part of that interior structure study is to learn how Jupiter rotates inside. We don\u2019t really know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"This
This image from NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft provides a never-before-seen perspective on Jupiter\u2019s south pole. The JunoCam instrument acquired the view on August 27, 2016, when the spacecraft was about 58,700 miles (94,500 kilometers) above the polar region. At this point, the spacecraft was about an hour past its closest approach, and fine detail in the south polar region is clearly resolved. Unlike the equatorial region\u2019s familiar structure of belts and zones, the poles are mottled by clockwise and counterclockwise rotating storms of various sizes, similar to giant versions of terrestrial hurricanes. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SwRI\/MSSS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jupiter\u2019s rotation is measured by studying radio waves generated as Jupiter\u2019s magnetic field rotates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that\u2019s the interior rotating,\u201d Bolton said. \u201cWe don\u2019t know how deep, what does that rotation period tie to as far as depth? We don\u2019t know, because we don\u2019t know where the magnetic field is created. That\u2019s part of our investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the field might be generated relatively near the visible surface of the planet, which would mean \u201cmaybe there\u2019s a different rotation going on deeper down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the ideas of the gravity investigation is to look at whether there\u2019s differential rotation in the interior,\u201d he said. \u201cIn other words, does the zone-belt structure represent different concentric cylinders inside rotating around at different rates or directions possibly? Or is that just meteorological, and the rotation inside is more like a solid? Or it could be some other option.\u201d<\/p>\n

But seeing different structure at the poles and losing the bands and zones seen in the equatorial regions \u201ccould be an indication, and I don\u2019t have any evidence of this, but it could be telling us somethings about the interior rotation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t you see the latitudinal bands up there, what\u2019s going on? Well, maybe the rotation is dictating that somehow inside, maybe the gases coming up from the interior into the polar regions are not governed by the same thing that\u2019s going on near the equator. I don\u2019t really know. But these are things that we\u2019ll learn over the course of the mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interestingly, polar storms photographed at the terminator, the region where sunlight fades into the planet\u2019s nightside, show hints of shadows \u201cthat make me think these hurricane-like features might be elevated and have vertical structure in them,\u201d Bolton said.<\/p>\n

\"This
This infrared image gives an unprecedented view of the southern aurora of Jupiter, as captured by NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft on August 27, 2016. The planet\u2019s southern aurora can hardly be seen from Earth due to our home planet\u2019s position in respect to Jupiter\u2019s south pole. Juno\u2019s unique polar orbit provides the first opportunity to observe this region of the gas-giant planet in detail. Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SwRI\/ASI\/INAF\/JIRAM<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s a very important thing that we\u2019ll be searching to see if that\u2019s common and what does that mean? Maybe you\u2019ve got this three-dimensional funnel going up above the other platform of atmosphere and that all these storms are elevated, or some category of them are. I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Juno will complete one more 53-day orbit before an Oct. 19 rocket firing that will drastically lower the high point of the ellipse, putting the spacecraft in a planned 14-day science orbit, repeatedly passing between 2,600 and 4,900 miles above Jupiter\u2019s cloud tops.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, Jupiter remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. But, Bolton hopes, not for long.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION The JunoCam instrument obtained this view on Aug. 27, about two hours before closest approach, when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (195,000 kilometers) away from the giant planet (i.e., for Jupiter\u2019s center). Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/SwRI\/MSSS NASA\u2019s Juno spacecraft, making its first scientific run over Jupiter\u2019s poles Aug. 27, captured […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1183,1929,2522,1606,472,2020,1561],"class_list":["post-15262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-jet-propulsion-laboratory","tag-juno","tag-junocam","tag-jupiter","tag-lockheed-martin","tag-new-frontiers","tag-planetary-science"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15262\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}