A movie of Jupiter’s south polar region
Cool movie time! Using Juno images, a citizen scientist has created a short movie showing two complete rotations of Jupiter’s south polar regions. I have embedded the movie below the fold. It is definitely worth watching. As he notes,
Due to Jupiter’s low axial tilt we never see more than roughly one half of the area around the poles in sunlight at any given time. However, it is interesting to see what Jupiter’s polar regions would look like if things were different and a big area around the poles was illuminated. This rotation movie shows what Jupiter’s south polar region would look like near the time of southern summer solstice if Jupiter’s axial tilt was much greater than it is, i.e. comparable to Saturn’s axial tilt.
He also notes the puzzling fact that, though Jupiter and Saturn are both gas giants, unlike Saturn Jupiter does not have a vortex at its poles. In fact, he points out how none of Jupiter’s storms are centered at the pole. Why one gas giant should have such pole-centered vortexes while another does not is a big mystery that illustrates how very little we know about planetary formation and evolution.
The two rotations also do not show any changes in the storms, not because they aren’t changing but because the images used were taken over too short a time span to show this.
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