What kind atmosphere does jupiter have

Jupiter's fast rotation — spinning once every 10 hours — creates strong jet streams, separating its clouds into dark belts and bright zones across long stretches. With no solid surface to slow them down, Jupiter's spots can persist for many years. Stormy Jupiter is swept by over a dozen prevailing winds, some reaching up to miles per hour kilometers per hour at the equator. The Great Red Spot, a swirling oval of clouds twice as wide as Earth, has been observed on the giant planet for more than years.

More recently, three smaller ovals merged to form the Little Red Spot, about half the size of its larger cousin. Anticyclones, which rotate in the opposite direction, are colder at the top but warmer at the bottom. The findings also indicate these storms are far taller than expected, with some extending 60 miles kilometers below the cloud tops and others, including the Great Red Spot, extending over miles kilometers.

This surprising discovery demonstrates that the vortices cover regions beyond those where water condenses and clouds form, below the depth where sunlight warms the atmosphere. With their gravity data, the Juno team was able to constrain the extent of the Great Red Spot to a depth of about miles kilometers below the cloud tops. Belts and Zones In addition to cyclones and anticyclones, Jupiter is known for its distinctive belts and zones — white and reddish bands of clouds that wrap around the planet.

Strong east-west winds moving in opposite directions separate the bands. Juno previously discovered that these winds, or jet streams, reach depths of about 2, miles roughly 3, kilometers. Researchers are still trying to solve the mystery of how the jet streams form. But at deeper levels, below the water clouds, the opposite is true — which reveals a similarity to our oceans. Over time, mission scientists determined these atmospheric phenomena are extremely resilient, remaining in the same location.

Juno data also indicates that, like hurricanes on Earth, these cyclones want to move poleward, but cyclones located at the center of each pole push them back. This balance explains where the cyclones reside and the different numbers at each pole.

The Jovian magnetosphere is the region of space influenced by Jupiter's powerful magnetic field. It balloons , to 2 million miles 1 to 3 million kilometers toward the Sun seven to 21 times the diameter of Jupiter itself and tapers into a tadpole-shaped tail extending more than million miles 1 billion kilometers behind Jupiter, as far as Saturn's orbit.

Jupiter's enormous magnetic field is 16 to 54 times as powerful as that of the Earth. It rotates with the planet and sweeps up particles that have an electric charge. Near the planet, the magnetic field traps swarms of charged particles and accelerates them to very high energies, creating intense radiation that bombards the innermost moons and can damage spacecraft.

Jupiter's magnetic field also causes some of the solar system's most spectacular aurorae at the planet's poles. It was akin to an alien craft visiting Earth for the first time and landing in a desert. We have a general idea of what happens in a hotspot.

When Jovian air enters such a region, it sinks into the hotter depths of Jupiter, where it warms up and dries out.

As it flows out of the hotspot a few days later, it rises back to its original altitude. A process called convection drives the formation of the clouds — the same basic way that clouds on Earth form. As the hot gases rise, they cool and condense into liquid droplets or ice crystals to form clouds. Jet streams on Earth are generated in a similar fashion.

Jupiter seems to have at least three major cloud layers made out of different chemicals. Each layer sits at an altitude where the temperature is cold enough for the respective chemicals to condense. The next layer consists of ammonia hydrosulfide, which smells like rotten eggs. Farther down are water-ice clouds, which likely sit on top of a blanket of water-ammonia fog that covers the planet. Juno will determine how much water is in each of these layers.

One possible reason is that a combination of lightning and sunlight somehow alters the ice at high altitudes, producing orange and brown hues. Organic compounds — molecules containing carbon — and sulfur compounds are most likely the chemicals that give the clouds their colors.

Jupiter is filled with swirling storms that originate in the water-cloud layer — or perhaps even deeper. These storms range in width from kilometers miles to over 1, kilometers miles , generating lightning that flashes times brighter than on Earth.

Jupiter's average distance from the Sun is million miles and takes nearly 12 years to make one revolution. Like the rest of the gas giants, Jupiter has a ring, albeit small and flat. Its rotation is the fastest of all solar system planets, rotating once on its axis every 10 hours.

This means at the equator, Jupiter is moving at 22, mph, compared with 1, mph for the Earth. See what this does to Jupiter's weather below. For the curious, the small object to the lower left of Jupiter in the photograph above is Ganymede, one of its four large inner moons. Atmosphere and Weather: Jupiter's extremely dense and relatively dry atmosphere is composed of a mixture of hydrogen, helium and much smaller amounts of methane and ammonia.

The same mixture of elements which made Jupiter also made the Sun. It is reasonable to assume, that under more extreme conditions, Jupiter could have evolved into a double-star companion to our Sun. However, Jupiter would have had to become at least 80 times more massive to become a star.

The atmosphere is probably a few hundred miles in depth, pulled toward the surface by the intense gravity.

Closer to the surface, the gases become more dense, and likely turn into a compound of slurry. Pioneer's 10 and 11 found evidence that the planet itself is composed almost entirely of liquid hydrogen and that there likely is no real interface between the atmosphere and surface. Jupiter's rocky core lies well below the "surface" and is very hot around 36, degrees F.

But Jupiter is much too small and cool to ignite nuclear fusion reactions which are required to become a star. As mentioned above, Jupiter's extremely fast rotation flattens the globe at the poles and drives extremely changeable weather patterns in the clouds which envelope the planet. The clouds are likely made of ammonia ice crystals, changing to ammonia droplets further down.

It is estimated that the temperature of the cloud tops are about degrees F. The violent hurricane can be seen from telescopes on Earth. The violent cyclone takes about six Earth-days to completely rotate, and is large enough to contain at least two Earths within it. Recent studies have indicated that the gigantic storm may be shrinking. Colder than the bands around it, the Great Red Spot must lie higher in the atmosphere.

The source of its reddish color has not yet been established, but it varies throughout the region. A third of the way into the planet, the hydrogen in the atmosphere becomes metallic, allowing it to conduct electricity. This helps to drive Jupiter's powerful magnetic field. The planet rotates rapidly — once every 9. Jupiter's magnetic field is almost 20, times as powerful as Earth.

The electromagnetic storms they generate can be heard by amateur radio operators on Earth, beamed toward us by the plasmas and magnetic field lines. At times, Jupiter can produce more powerful radio signals than the sun. This article was updated on Oct. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more!

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