Swirling Ammonia Lies Below Jupiter's Thick Clouds (4 of 4) (IMAGE)

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Swirling Ammonia Lies Below Jupiter's Thick Clouds (4 of 4)

Caption

In this animated GIF, optical images of the surface clouds encircling Jupiter's equator -- including the famous Great Red Spot -- alternate with new detailed radio images of the deep atmosphere (up to 30 kilometers below the clouds). The radio map shows ammonia-rich gases rising to the surface (dark) intermixed with descending, ammonia-poor gases (bright). In the cold temperatures of the upper atmosphere (160 to 200 Kelvin, or -170 to -100 degrees Fahrenheit), the rising ammonia condenses into clouds, which are invisible in the radio region. This material relates to a paper that appeared in the June 3, 2016 issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by I. de Pater at University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., and colleagues was titled, "Peering through Jupiter's clouds with radio spectral imaging."

Credit

Radio: Robert J. Sault (Univ. Melbourne), Imke de Pater and Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley). Optical: Marco Vedovato, Christopher Go, Manos Kardasis, Ian Sharp, Imke de Pater

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