Scientists get their best-ever look at Jupiter's atmosphere and storms

It's always dark and stormy on Jupiter — and now, scientists have gotten their most detailed view of the wild storms that swirl through the gas giant's atmosphere.

Those observations are thanks to a very powerful partnership that stretches from Earth's surface to Jupiter itself. Start with NASA's Juno probe, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016, then recruit NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has checked in on the solar system's largest planet throughout its three decades of operation. Finally, add in the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii to support the observations from Earth.

"Because we now routinely have these high-resolution views from a couple of different observatories and wavelengths, we are learning so much more about Jupiter's weather," Amy Simon, an astronomer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland who focuses on planetary atmospheres and took part in the new research, said in a NASA statement. "This is our equivalent of a weather satellite. We can finally start looking at weather cycles."

A full-disk view of Jupiter in infrared light, as seen by the Gemini Observatory on May 29, 2019. (Image credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley) and team)

And there's plenty of weather on Jupiter to look at. Although the Great Red Spot is the most famous storm on the giant world, all of the gas giant's storms are impressive, with clouds stretching five times higher than Earth's equivalent and lightning three times more powerful than the strongest bolts on Earth.

Every 53 days, Juno skims over Jupiter's cloud tops in a close approach called a perijove, gathering data all the while. Among the spacecraft's instruments is a microwave radiometer, which is tuned to identify lightning strikes and study what ammonia and water vapor are doing in the gas giant's atmosphere.

The scientists behind the new research arranged to target Hubble and Gemini to study Jupiter in coordination with Juno's schedule. So while Juno studies a swath of the gas giant as it passes overhead, Hubble and Gemini study the bigger picture of atmospheric activity on Jupiter.

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