Science & Technology

The researchers were surprised when NASA's Juno spacecraft recently flew over the Jupiter poles as if they had never before seen a giant planet.

The images were different in planetary exploration history.

On 4 July 2016, Juno entered orbit and later found Jupiter's pole covered by storms of almost continental size, which had been densely clustered and rubbed together in a mental swirling.

"It's like a whole new Jupiter," says Scott Bolton, Southwest Research Institute's lead investigator, Juno. "The clouds were wonderful."

What is striking about Jupiter's polar storms is that each pole actually has several cyclones. Thus, Jupiter was observed to have as many as eight giant swirls moving simultaneously on his north poles and as many as five on his south pole instead of having one polar vortex-like Earth.

Even more incredible things lurk below. Researchers have long wondered about the hidden interior of the giant planet. How far do the storms of Jupiter's continent go down? And what's the exotic material near the core of the planet?

In Jupiter, high temperatures and crushing pressures transform the abundant supplies of gaseous molecular hydrogen by Jupiter into an exotic form of material called liquid metallic hydrogen. Think of it as a mashup of nuclear nuclei in a freely moving sea of electrons. The strong magnetic field of Jupiter most certainly comes from dynamo action in the interior of Jupiter, which converts the motion of this electrically driving fluid into magnetic energy. The exact location inside the interior is a mystery that researchers continue to work to resolve.

A magnetic field of a planet becomes weaker as you get away from its core. The magnetic field of Jupiter is 10,000 times stronger than the Earth! The magnetic field of Jupiter is only 20 times larger on the cloud tops, however than what we measure on the Earth's surface. This is because Jupiter is so much bigger than Earth.

Astronomers are known for the fact that Jupiter has the highest magnetic planetary field in the solar system. Jack Connerney, Juno Senior Investigator at NASA's Goddard SPC, said, "Juno's magnetometers show that the magnetic field of Jupiter is even stronger than we thought."

"In addition, the magnetic field looks lumpy," he said. "In some places, it is stronger and in others, it is weaker. This uneven distribution indicates that dynamo action close to the surface could generate the field above the layer of metallic hydrogen."

The magnetic field of Jupiter is home to the largest and most influential auroras in the planetary system. In contrast to the Earth that lights up in response to global temperature, Jupiter produces its own auroras. It accomplishes this by leveraging the power of its magnetic spinning field. Induced electric fields speed up particles to the pole of Jupiter, where aurora action occurs.

Juno's Microwave Radiometer, which helps to measure thermal microwaves which radiate from the deep recesses of the planet, reveals the structure of several hundred kilometers under thick clouds of Jupiter, provides alternative insight.

Recent results from Juno's Gravity experiment show that Jupiter's emblematic belts and zones rotate at depths between 3000 and 5,000 km as a series of cylinders. Below this depth, Jupiter seems to be rotating as a rigid body.

There are still new discoveries about Jupiter. Bolton states, "Juno floats to Jupiter every 53 days and gets doused with a bolt of data. "It's always new to discover."