![]() We asked Webb senior project scientist John Mather to reflect on reaching this moment after 25 years, taking Webb from an initial spark of an idea to the world’s premier space observatory. Webb is fully commissioned and already embarked on its first year of peer-reviewed science programs. 19) in the journal Nature Astronomy.People around the world joined together in excitement as the first color scientific images and spectra from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope were revealed this week. The paper was published on Thursday (Oct. "It’ll be really exciting to test this theory in the years to come." "If the strength of this new jet is connected to this oscillating stratospheric pattern, we might expect the jet to vary considerably over the next two to four years. "Jupiter has a complicated but repeatable pattern of winds and temperatures in its equatorial stratosphere, high above the winds in the clouds and hazes measured at these wavelengths," Fletcher said. The extremely fast jet itself is located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) above the planet's cloud tops, so if lower winds exhibit much lower speeds, wind shears are likely the result. In other words, the team explains, that comparison could help us understand how wind speeds on Jupiter change with altitude and generate what are known as "wind shears," which are kind of like wind speed gradients over short distances. James Webb Space Telescope finds a 'hot Jupiter' exoplanet that defies expectations Jupiter's volcanic moon Io glows red in incredible images from NASA's Juno James Webb Space Telescope and Hubble will help NASA's Juno probe study Jupiter's volcanic moon Io "We knew the different wavelengths of Webb and Hubble would reveal the three-dimensional structure of storm clouds, but we were also able to use the timing of the data to see how rapidly storms develop," Michael Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the associated Hubble observations and was a member of the new study, said in the statement. In fact, Hubble images - which are primarily associated with the visible and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum - have already helped out, offering information about what the area around Jupiter's equator usually looks like (so the team could have a baseline before studying JWST's equatorial jet stream data) and regarding other storms in the region unrelated to the jet. Wong (UC Berkeley), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)) (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ricardo Hueso (UPV), Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley), Thierry Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), Leigh Fletcher (University of Leicester), Michael H. At a wavelength of 2.12 microns, which observes between altitudes of about 12-21 miles (20-35 kilometers) above Jupiter’s cloud tops, researchers spotted several wind shears, or areas where wind speeds change with height or with distance, which enabled them to track the jet. Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) have discovered a high-speed jet stream sitting over Jupiter’s equator, above the main cloud decks. Hopefully, that'll give us a pretty clear picture of those wild Jovian winds. ![]() ![]() It's also why Hueso and fellow researchers hope to compare what the JWST's infrared vision has seen among Jupiter's high-altitude atmospheric layers - which revealed the new jet stream via some cloud-related features - with what the Hubble Space Telescope has already seen in deeper layers. This means wind speeds in different layers are probably contributing to the giant planet's tumultuous climate. And, importantly for science investigations, Jupiter's atmosphere is layered, like Earth's. Jupiter is notorious for its extreme weather you might've heard of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, for instance, which is a never-ending, enormous storm that's so huge it's visible from our vantage point on Earth with a regular old optical telescope. "What we have always seen as blurred hazes in Jupiter’s atmosphere now appear as crisp features that we can track along with the planet’s fast rotation," Hueso said. In fact, all of those 2022 Jupiter images might help researchers deduce what goes on in the skies of the apricot-striped orb. What could this mean?Īccording to the team, this newfound jet stream on Jupiter - that's blasting away at about twice the speed of a Category 5 hurricane on Earth and sits right above the equator - might shed some light on the planet's turbulent atmosphere. "It’s amazing to me that, after years of tracking Jupiter’s clouds and winds from numerous observatories, we still have more to learn," Leigh Fletcher of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom, a member of the new study, said in the statement. ![]()
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