A crowd of Jupiter hurricanes
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 5, 2022 during Juno’s 43rd close fly-by of Jupiter, and was enhanced by citizen scientist Brian Swift. It shows a group of storms, what planetary scientists have labeled “vortices” near Jupiter’s north pole.
These powerful storms can be over 30 miles (50 kilometers) in height and hundreds of miles across. Figuring out how they form is key to understanding Jupiter’s atmosphere, as well as the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry that create the planet’s other atmospheric features. Scientists are particularly interested in the vortices’ varying shapes, sizes, and colors. For example, cyclones, which spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern, and anti-cyclones, which rotate clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, exhibit very different colors and shapes.
The image highlights the type of storm Juno scientists are asking the pubic to category in a new citizen scientist project called Jovian Vortex Hunter. You go to its website and go through Juno images, noting and categorizing them. So far more than 2,400 volunteers have marked up more than 375,000 storms.
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on July 5, 2022 during Juno’s 43rd close fly-by of Jupiter, and was enhanced by citizen scientist Brian Swift. It shows a group of storms, what planetary scientists have labeled “vortices” near Jupiter’s north pole.
These powerful storms can be over 30 miles (50 kilometers) in height and hundreds of miles across. Figuring out how they form is key to understanding Jupiter’s atmosphere, as well as the fluid dynamics and cloud chemistry that create the planet’s other atmospheric features. Scientists are particularly interested in the vortices’ varying shapes, sizes, and colors. For example, cyclones, which spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern, and anti-cyclones, which rotate clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere, exhibit very different colors and shapes.
The image highlights the type of storm Juno scientists are asking the pubic to category in a new citizen scientist project called Jovian Vortex Hunter. You go to its website and go through Juno images, noting and categorizing them. So far more than 2,400 volunteers have marked up more than 375,000 storms.
