Jupiter’s atmosphere and clouds have mesmerized stargazers for centuries, as their multi-colored, swirling layers can easily be viewed from powerful telescopes on Earth. However, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has upped the ante regarding our understanding of Jupiter’s atmospheric features, having revealed them in breathtaking detail. This includes images of massive lightning storms, clouds swallowing clouds, polar vortices, and powerful jet streams. Yet, despite its beauty and wonder, scientists are still puzzled about the processes occurring deep inside Jupiter’s atmosphere that result in these incredible features.
Now, a collaborative team of scientists from NASA and academia have provided new insights into the interior mechanisms of Jupiter’s atmosphere, with their findings being published in *The Planetary Science Journal* on January 8. Through a series of computer models designed to simulate Jupiter’s interior mechanisms, the team primarily focused on exploring the oxygen content of Jupiter’s atmosphere.
After using a combination of a 1D chemistry-based model and a 2D hydrodynamic model, the team discovered that Jupiter contains about one and a half times more oxygen than the Sun. Additionally, the team found that the circulation patterns within Jupiter’s atmosphere are much slower than previously hypothesized. Discovering Jupiter’s higher-than-expected oxygen content could help scientists constrain planetary formation and evolution models, for both planets in our solar system, and beyond.
“This is a long-standing debate in planetary studies,” said Dr. Jeehyun Yang, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago and lead author on the study. “It’s a testament to how the latest generation of computational models can transform our understanding of other planets.”
The amount of oxygen found in Jupiter’s atmosphere is almost negligible compared to the hydrogen and helium that largely comprises the largest planet in the solar system. However, these findings nonetheless profoundly change our understanding of Jupiter and its atmospheric composition and behavior. Along with helping scientists better understand how our own solar system formed and evolved, Jupiter is often used as an analog for gas giant exoplanets.
Since arriving at the Jovian system on July 4, 2016, Juno has profoundly changed our understanding of the largest planet in the solar system, along with providing breathtaking images. This includes discovering Jupiter’s poles exhibit several vortices, as opposed to a single large vortex on Saturn, along with discovering that Jupiter potentially lacks a solid rocky core, and instead has a “fuzzy” core comprised of heavy elements mixed with hydrogen.
Additionally, Juno has obtained incredible images and gathered groundbreaking data regarding Jupiter’s four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. This includes imaging extreme volcanic activity on Io, finding that Europa’s ice shell thickness is different across the surface, confirmed that Ganymede has its own magnetic field, and finding that Callisto has internal activity despite it being comprised largely of ice.
Juno’s mission was extended through September 2025, with plans to continue spacecraft operations until it runs out of fuel or ceases function. This is when NASA plans to intentionally have Juno crash into Jupiter’s atmosphere to avoid contaminating the Galilean moons with Earth’s microbes. This similar “retirement” was used for NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in Jupiter and NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in Saturn in September 2003 and September 2017, respectively.
What new insights into Jupiter’s interior will scientists make in the coming years and decades? What can Jupiter's interior continue to teach scientists about planetary formation and evolution, and specifically exoplanets? How much more data will Juno gather before the end of its mission? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!