Hubble Catches Jupiter Changing Its Stripes

Massive Jupiter is undergoing dramatic atmospheric changes that have never been seen before with the keen "eye" of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Jupiter's turbulent clouds are always changing as they encounter atmospheric disturbances while sweeping around the planet at hundreds of miles per hour. But these Hubble images reveal a rapid transformation in the shape and color of Jupiter's clouds near the equator, marking an entire face of the globe.

Those damn SUVs.

We did crash some probes into it recently, which probably increased the amount of CO2 in its atmosphere ... there you go, it's settled! There can be no other explanation.

...Between March 25 and June 5, Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 captured entire bands of clouds changing color. Zones have darkened into belts and belts have lightened and transformed into zones. Cloud features have rapidly altered in shape and size.

The image at left shows a thin band of white clouds above Jupiter's equator. The white color indicates clouds at higher altitudes in Jupiter's atmosphere. In the image at right, the band's white hue has turned brown, showing clouds deep within the planet's atmosphere. The whole band appears to have merged with the one below it.

In the same cloud band above the equator, the small swirls in the left-hand image have morphed into larger wave-like features in the right-hand photo. Dominating the band is a dark streak that resembles a snake. This serpent-shaped structure is actually a small tear in the cloud deck, which gives astronomers a view deep within the atmosphere.

Jupiter Changing Its Stripes, TechNEWS

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Did NASA Accidentally “Nuke” Jupiter?

>Has anyone on FR been able to listen to Jupiter’s magnetosphere?

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Jupiter is a wonderful object for radio study. It is somewhat predictable and yet often surprising in its violent outbursts below 40 MHz. You can receive Jupiter using relatively simple equipment or you can construct complex spectrograph receivers and build monstrous antenna arrays to capture its more subtle messages. The complex relationship between the gas giant planet and its volcanic moon Io is not completely understood, but we do know these bodies work together to produce "radio noise storms" as they pirouette through space. Many factors come into play for the amateur radio astronomer who tries to capture a noise storm. In order maximize your chances of success, you should take time to understand the potential hurdles and optimize your equipment for this task. ...

Radio-Jupiter Central

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