NASA's Juno probe is revealing the massive structure of Jupiter's iconic Great Red Spot, a massive storm that has ravaged the gas giant planet for centuries, the verge reported. By flying over this circular storm several times, Juno helped scientists confirm that the Great Red Spot did not just exist on the upper surface, but extended hundreds of miles to the planet itself.
The Great Red Spot is about 10,000 miles in diameter, but scientists have never fully understood how deep the Great Red Spot is. Is it just a superficial event, or does it go deep into Jupiter's interior?
Now, thanks to two scientific instruments aboard Juno, planetary researchers have identified a fairly reliable range for the storm. According to research published in the journal Science, they believe the storm's depth is between 186-310 miles (about 300-500 kilometers). This may seem small compared to the diameter of the Great Red Spot, but this depth still makes this a very powerful weather event. "That means it's a huge storm," Yohai Kaspi, a juno co-researcher at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science, told the verge. "If you put this storm on Earth, it will extend all the way to the space station." So it's just a monster. ”
Scientists can use NASA's Hubble Space Telescope or other ground-based telescopes in Earth orbit to study the Great Red Spot. The instruments helped determine the diameter of the storm, but scientists can only speculate on the overall structure of the Great Red Spot. Marzia Parisi, a research scientist in the Juno Science Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told the verge: "Some of them speculate that it will be very, very shallow, like we said tens of kilometers." And there are others who think, 'Well, theoretically, it could go deep into jupiter's core'. ”
Then, in 2011, NASA launched the Juno probe, a probe designed to get closer to Jupiter than any previous spacecraft. Juno spent five years traveling through deep space, and in 2016, the spacecraft entered a very wide orbit around Jupiter that would allow Juno to approach the planet every 53 days. In the course of these approaches (or "perijoves"), Juno has collected much of the data on Jupiter and what might be hovering inside this gaseous giant.
Perhaps the most exciting part of juno's mission is that the probe was the first spacecraft to fly over Jupiter's poles — an area on the planet that had never been seen before the mission began. But in 2019, juno underwent a minor reorientation. Scientists adjusted the direction of the spacecraft, flying over the large red spot twice to better understand what was going on beneath the storm.
During both overflights, Juno measured the gravitational field of the Great Red Spot in an attempt to figure out how deep the storm really was. The Great Red Spot is so large that the Juno spacecraft can actually feel the tiny gravitational disturbances produced by the storm. Ultimately, gravity signals showed that the storm did not extend to a depth of 500 kilometers. Scientists then combined this information with microwave measurements made by Juno back in 2017 and found that the storm extended to a depth of at least 300 kilometers. These measurements provide a fairly good maximum and minimum limit for the depth of the storm.
They are by far the best measurement we have obtained of the structure of the Great Red Spot. But they also raise some questions. First, the storm was deep, but not as deep as some of the surrounding jets, which extended 1800 miles from Jupiter. Juno also helped identify these measurements, and scientists aren't sure why there are discrepancies there. Parisi said: "It's surprisingly deep... But it's not as deep as the jet. So something happened at 500 km that basically suppressed the Great Red Spot. ”
This means that there is still more knowledge about how things inside Jupiter are stirring. But thanks to Juno, scientists have a more comprehensive understanding of the planet and its most famous storm than ever before. Parisi said: "Before, we only had this 2D view, just looking from the outside. And now we have a complete 3D view. ”