Bored to Floored The remarkable James Webb Space Telescope has been used to image the furthest reaches of the cosmos. But in a change of pace, astronomers have leveraged its immense powers on a target far closer to home: the mighty planet Jupiter — and in so doing, they’ve found mysterious features and structures on […]
NASA’s Juno spacecraft imaged volcanic plumes on the surface of Jovian moon Io. | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS Image processing by Andrea Luck NASA’s Juno mission might have originally been all about Jupiter, but its extended mission has the spacecraft observing the gas giant’s moons — and it’s making some pretty interesting discoveries. Its latest find? The […]
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have found previously unseen structures and activity in Jupiter’s atmosphere above the Great Red Spot. These odd features seem to be caused by powerful atmospheric gravity waves. The Great Red Spot is the largest storm in the solar system, twice as big as Earth, and is believed to have been […]
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have found previously unseen structures and activity in Jupiter’s atmosphere above the Great Red Spot. These odd features seem to be caused by powerful atmospheric gravity waves. The Great Red Spot is the largest storm in the solar system, twice as big as Earth, and is believed […]
Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Jupiter’s iconic Great Red Spot is a massive storm that has swirled within the atmosphere of the largest planet in the solar system for years. But astronomers have debated just how old the vortex really is, […]
In 1665, Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini observed a giant dark spot on Jupiter, which he called the “Permanent Spot.” (English scientist Robert Hooke might’ve discovered it a year earlier, in 1664, but I digress.) Though astronomers mysteriously lost track of the spot for centuries, we’ve always thought that the original “Permanent Spot” might be the […]
You’d be forgiven for thinking that these recently released images of Jupiter’s active moon named Io, were taken from space. The images were in fact, taken by attaching a camera known as the SHARK-VIS attached to the Large Binocular Telescope, which sits atop Mt. Graham in Arizona, USA. This is equivalent to taking a picture […]
How different are Jupiter‘s gaseous layers and Earth’s oceans? Perhaps not as much as you expect. Lia Siegelman, a physical oceanographer at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has been studying Jupiter through the lens of Earth’s oceans to determine what powers the gas giant’s raging cyclones. “Jupiter is basically an […]
Using a telescope perched on a mountain in Arizona, scientists have managed to take snapshots of Jupiter’s active moon Io — and these images are so detailed they even rival pictures of the world taken from space. To capture these views, the team used a camera, dubbed SHARK-VIS, that was recently installed on the Large […]
Using a telescope perched on a mountain in Arizona, scientists have managed to take snapshots of Jupiter’s active moon Io — and these images are so detailed they even rival pictures of the world taken from space. To capture these views, the team used a camera, dubbed SHARK-VIS, that was recently installed on the Large […]
In October this year, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch one of the most sophisticated spacecraft ever assembled. Its destination? Europa, Jupiter’s fourth largest moon. The Europa Clipper mission, which aims to reach Europa by 2030, is stacked with a number of instruments that can help scientists understand the moon’s complex geology […]
Recent photographs taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft have revealed that Jupiter’s fourth largest moon, Europa, has been hiding a rather large secret underneath its icy crust. Europa is actually closer to a planet than a moon. It has a magnetic field, a fragile oxygen atmosphere, and a liquid iron core. It has an icy crust […]