Your gateway to endless inspiration
Stormy - Blog Posts
New results from our Juno mission suggest the planet is home to “shallow lightning.” An unexpected form of electrical discharge, shallow lightning comes from a unique ammonia-water solution.
It was previously thought that lightning on Jupiter was similar to Earth, forming only in thunderstorms where water exists in all its phases – ice, liquid, and gas. But flashes observed at altitudes too cold for pure liquid water to exist told a different story. This illustration uses data obtained by the mission to show what these high-altitude electrical storms look like.
Understanding the inner workings of Jupiter allows us to develop theories about atmospheres on other planets and exoplanets!
Illustration Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Heidi N. Becker/Koji Kuramura
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
In Roman mythology, the god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief. It was only Jupiter's wife, the goddess Juno, who could peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. Our @NASAJuno spacecraft is looking beneath the clouds of the massive gas giant, not seeking signs of misbehavior, but helping us to understand the planet's structure and history... Now, @NASAJuno just published its first findings on the amount of water in the gas giant’s atmosphere. The Juno results estimate that at the equator, water makes up about 0.25% of the molecules in Jupiter's atmosphere — almost three times that of the Sun. An accurate total estimate of this water is critical to solving the mystery of how our solar system formed.
The JunoCam imager aboard Juno captured this image of Jupiter's southern equatorial region on Sept. 1, 2017. The bottom image is oriented so Jupiter's poles (not visible) run left-to-right of frame.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill
It was a dark and stormy flyby...
Our @NASAJuno spacecraft's JunoCam captured images of the chaotic, stormy northern hemisphere of Jupiter during its 24th close pass of the giant planet on Dec. 26, 2019. Using data from the flyby, citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this color-enhanced image. At the time, the spacecraft was about 14,600 miles (23,500 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds, at a latitude of about 69 degrees north.
Image Credit: Image data: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Image processing by Kevin M. Gill, © CC BY
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com