Key Highlights :
Jupiter is one of the most fascinating and mysterious planets in the solar system. While its Great Red Spot is one of the most well-known spectacles, its multicolored, rotating, and swirling cloud stripes are also a sight to behold. But what’s even more fascinating is that these stripes have been observed to change color from time to time, leaving astronomers wondering what causes this color change. A recent study published in Nature Astronomy has shed some light on this mystery, suggesting that Jupiter’s massive magnetic field could be responsible for the changing colors of its stripes.
Led by Dr. Kumiko Hori of Kobe University and Dr. Chris Jones of the University of Leeds, the study examined data collected from NASA’s Juno spacecraft to measure variations in Jupiter’s magnetic field. The team focused on a specific area of the magnetic field dubbed the Great Blue Spot, which is invisible to the naked eye and located near Jupiter’s equator. While this spot has been observed to be traveling eastwards on Jupiter, the data from this study indicates the spot is slowing down, which the team interprets as the start of an oscillation within the magnetic field, meaning the spot could eventually slow enough to where it reverses direction and starts traveling westwards.
The study’s findings indicate that these oscillations could explain the changes in Jupiter’s stripes and bands over time, but the study stops short of saying this is the definitive reason for it. The team suggests that more research is needed to understand how exactly the torsional oscillation produces the observed infrared variation, which likely reflects the complex dynamics and cloud/aerosol reactions.
Since its arrival at Jupiter in 2016, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has sent back some of the most breathtaking up-close images of Jupiter ever taken, along with images of Jupiter’s Galilean Moons on occasion due to the spacecraft’s elongated orbit around Jupiter. Now in its seventh year of science operations around Jupiter, Juno is currently scheduled to explore the solar system’s largest planet until September 2025. What discoveries about Jupiter and its massive magnetic field will Juno teach us in the next few years? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
The findings of this study could help scientists better understand how a planet’s magnetic field could influence a planet’s weather patterns, and could even open a window to probe the hidden deep interior of Jupiter, just like seismology does for the Earth and helioseismology does for the Sun.
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Title: Uncovering the Mystery Behind Jupiter's Changing Stripes: How Jupiter's Magnetic Field Could be Responsible