NASA Juno finds Jupiter’s jet-streams are unearthly

Data collected by NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter indicate that the atmospheric winds of the gas-giant planet run deep into its atmosphere and last longer than similar atmospheric processes found here on Earth.

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Tau.Neutrino said:

NASA Juno finds Jupiter’s jet-streams are unearthly

Data collected by NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter indicate that the atmospheric winds of the gas-giant planet run deep into its atmosphere and last longer than similar atmospheric processes found here on Earth.

more…

Perfect timing. Have some recent images from Juno.

There are some even more amazing images on https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/7/17085462/nasa-juno-spacecraft-jupiter-fluids-winds . Unfortunately I couldn’t successfully copy the images here.

A NON-COMPACT CORE?
A big goal of Juno has been to figure out if the planet has a compact core or not. So Juno has been mapping Jupiter’s gravity field to determine the distribution of materials inside the planet. And those measurements seem to indicate that Jupiter doesn’t have a smaller compact core like people expected, but instead the core is larger and more spread out. There’s also some indication that various regions of the core may be moving in different directions. It may not be moving around like it’s one solid body.

A VARIABLE MAGNETIC FIELD
Juno is also measuring Jupiter’s magnetic field, a charged current that surrounds the planet and deflects or captures particles coming from the Sun. In June, before Juno inserted itself into orbit, the spacecraft crossed through the boundary of the magnetic field — known as the bow shock.
Now that the spacecraft has been hanging out at Jupiter, it’s been taking measurements of the field from within. And one thing that Juno has noticed is that the closer it gets to Jupiter, the more variation it finds in the strength of the magnetic field. When we get really close to the planet, we’re getting much higher highs and much lower lows than we would have anticipated based on our current knowledge. And that provides some clues as to where inside the planet the magnetic field is being generated.

A major finding is that the atmosphere of Jupiter is very deep, with strong convection down to about 3,000 km deep. But that means that it still only accounts for 1% of Jupiter’s mass.

The larger than expected core rotates almost but not quite as a rigid body.

Jupiter’s south pole in infrared

Jupiter’s north pole in infrared.

The twilight zone.

Jupiter’s polar polygons.