Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have found previously unseen structures and activity in Jupiter’s atmosphere above the Great Red Spot. These peculiar features appear to be caused by strong atmospheric gravity waves.
The Great Red Spot is the largest storm in the solar system, twice the size of Earth, and is believed to have been raging for at least 300 years, according to NASA. The Great Red Spot wind rages at approximately 270 to 425 miles per hour (430 to 680 kilometers per hour), which is up to 3.5 times faster than a tornado here on Earth.
Despite the age, size and power of the storm, scientists actually suspected that Jupiter’s atmosphere above the Great Red Spot wasn’t all that interesting. However, these new observations provided by JWST’s Near InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec), which observed the massive Scarlet Storm in July 2022, show that assumption could not be more wrong.
Related: Is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot a hoax? The giant storm may not be the original one that was discovered 350 years ago
“We thought this region, perhaps naively, would be really boring,” team leader Henrik Melin of the University of Leicester said in a statement. “In fact, it’s just as interesting as the aurora borealis, if not more so. Jupiter never ceases to amaze.”
What secrets does the Great Red Spot hide?
Jupiter’s upper atmosphere is the point where the planet’s lower atmosphere meets the magnetic field. This leads to the bright northern and southern lights, powered by a bombardment of charged particles from the sun and driven by showers of volcanic material emanating from the Jovian moon Io, the most active volcanic body in the solar system.
Jupiter may be one of the brightest objects in the night sky above Earth, easily visible in clear skies. However, the atmosphere of the largest planet in the Solar System shines only faintly, except for the northern and southern lights, which makes it difficult for ground-based telescopes to see the Earth’s atmosphere in detail.
From JWST’s position a million miles from Earth, our planet’s atmosphere is no obstacle for this $10 billion space telescope. In addition, JWST’s infrared sensitivity allows the gas giant’s atmosphere to be seen in intricate detail, including the region above the Great Red Spot.
Melin and colleagues sought to see if this region was a bit dull, and focused on it using NIRSpec, JWST’s main instrument. This led to the discovery of various complex structures in JWST’s field of view, including dark arcs and bright spots.
Although incident sunlight is responsible for most of the light seen from Jupiter’s atmosphere, the team believes there must be more that causes changes in the shape and structure of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere.
“One way you can change this structure is through gravitational waves — similar to the waves that hit the beach and create ripples in the sand,” Melin explained. “These waves are generated deep in the turbulent lower atmosphere, all around the Great Red Spot, and can travel aloft and change the structure and emissions of the upper atmosphere.”
These gravitational waves are very different from gravitational waves, the last of which are the tiny ripples in space and time predicted by Albert Einstein in his 1915 theory of general relativity. Gravitational waves propagate through the atmosphere, unlike the structure of spacetime as gravitational waves yes.
These atmospheric gravity waves are also occasionally seen on Earth, but these waves on Earth are much less intense and strong than the same phenomenon that occurs over Jupiter.
The team now hopes to build on the detection of these newfound features of the Great Red Spot and the complex wave patterns underlying the JWST. This future investigation could reveal how waves flow through the gas giant’s upper atmosphere and how this causes the observed structures to move.
The findings are expected to help better understand the energy distribution on Jupiter and could help support the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission.
JUICE launched on April 14, 2023, and will arrive at Jupiter and its moons in 2031, when it will make detailed observations of Jupiter and its three large oceanic moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
The team’s results are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Originally published on Space.com.