Jupiter's interior and deep atmosphere: The initial pole-to-pole passes with the Juno spacecraft

Creators: Bolton, S. J.; Ingersoll, A.; Li, C.; Stone, E.; Stevenson, D.

Abstract

On 27 August 2016, the Juno spacecraft acquired science observations of Jupiter, passing less than 5000 kilometers above the equatorial cloud tops. Images of Jupiter's poles show a chaotic scene, unlike Saturn's poles. Microwave sounding reveals weather features at pressures deeper than 100 bars, dominated by an ammonia-rich, narrow low-latitude plume resembling a deeper, wider version of Earth's Hadley cell. Near-infrared mapping reveals the relative humidity within prominent downwelling regions. Juno's measured gravity field differs substantially from the last available estimate and is one order of magnitude more precise. This has implications for the distribution of heavy elements in the interior, including the existence and mass of Jupiter's core. The observed magnetic field exhibits smaller spatial variations than expected, indicative of a rich harmonic content.

Additional Information

© 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received 13 December 2016; accepted 1 May 2017. We acknowledge the important contributions of M. H. Acuña, A. Coradini, and M. J. Klein to the Juno project. The images in Fig. 1 were processed by citizen scientist R. Tkachenko as part of Juno's outreach program. The visible map shown in Fig. 2 is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) under program GO14334, the Outer Planet Atmospheric Legacy Program. Support for the Juno project is provided under NASA grant NNM06AA75C to Southwest Research Institute; NASA grant NNN12AA01C to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech; Centre National d'Études Spatiales (T.G. and Y.M.); and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) (A.A., D.G., L.I., and A.M.). The JIRAM and Ka-band instruments are funded by ASI; HST is funded by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. under NASA contract NAS5-26555. All maps from this program can be retrieved at https://archive.stsci.edu/prepds/opal/. Supporting data are available in the supplementary materials. As agreed with NASA, fully calibrated Juno data are released on schedule via the NASA Planetary Data System at https://pds.nasa.gov/.

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