Astronomers have produced a remarkable new image of Jupiter, tracing the glowing regions of warmth that lurk beneath the gas giant's cloud tops.
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| It took hundreds of exposures to build this sharp image mosaic of Jupiter in the infrared |
The
picture was captured in infrared by the Gemini North Telescope in
Hawaii, and is one of the sharpest observations of the planet ever made
from the ground.
To achieve the resolution, scientists used a
technique called "lucky imaging" which scrubs out the blurring effect of
looking through Earth's turbulent atmosphere.
This method
involves acquiring multiple exposures of the target and only keeping
those segments of an image where that turbulence is at a minimum.
When all the "lucky shots" are put together in a mosaic, a clarity emerges that's beyond just the single exposure.
Infrared is a longer wavelength than the more familiar visible
light detected by the likes of the Hubble telescope. It is used to see
past the haze and thin clouds at the top of Jupiter's atmosphere, to
give scientists the opportunity to probe deeper into the planet's
internal workings.
Researchers want to understand better what
makes and sustains the gas giant's weather systems, and in particular
the great storms that can rage for decades and even centuries.
The
study that produced this infrared image was led from the University of
California at Berkeley. It was part of a joint programme of observations
that involved Hubble and the Juno spacecraft that's currently orbiting
the fifth planet from the Sun.
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| Jupiter as seen in visible wavelengths of light by Hubble |
Fast facts about Jupiter
- Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth and 300 times more massive
- It takes 12 Earth years to orbit the Sun; a 'day' is 10 hours long
- In composition it resembles a star; it's mostly hydrogen and helium
- Under pressure, the hydrogen assumes a state similar to a metal
- This 'metallic hydrogen' could be the source of the magnetic field
- Most of the visible cloudtops contain ammonia and hydrogen sulphide
- Jupiter's low-latitude 'bands' play host to very strong east-west winds
- The Great Red Spot is a giant storm vortex wider than Planet Earth
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