Tzedek - summary of findings, fourth and last part: the red spots

The Great Red Spot, active in Jupiter for at least hundreds of years, has spawned more spots in recent years. What does the phenomenon mean?

the jet stream

On Earth, the jet streams are narrow currents of air from west to east in the middle latitudes. They are a major component of the global air circulation and they balance a large part of the weather in the USA and many countries outside the tropics. Similar jet streams are also a central component in the circulation of the gaseous planets and reach speeds of 640 km/h in Jupiter, and 1440 km/h in Saturn and Neptune. According to a developed model, horizontal temperature differences usually created by the sun or differences in thunderstorm activity can create jet streams that can penetrate deep into the atmosphere. Temperature differences affect deep circulation cells which in turn drive the deep jet streams (39).

In the proposed model condensed water vapor (condense) creates small hurricane-like storms that come in contact with each other. Since the 80s it has been known that thunderstorms occur on Jupiter and Saturn and that they drive the jet streams. Unlike Earth, Jupiter and Saturn each have 20 jet streams associated with cloud bands. Uranus and Neptune only have 3 jet streams each. On Jupiter and Saturn the direction of the jet streams at the equator is east and on Uranus and Neptune their direction is west. In the simulations such numbers of jet streams were created. These models were able to explain the direction of the equatorial winds for all the gas planets. In the simulations, the differences are balanced by explosions of water vapor which are moderate in quantity on Jupiter and Saturn and in greater quantity on Uranus and Neptune. The storms produced in the simulations are similar to those that actually occur on Jupiter and Saturn, although it should be noted that the winds in the simulations are too weak. Improvements in this discrepancy are needed by refining the models (40).

The big red spot

The dimensions of the Great Red Spot are 14,000-26,000 km. These dimensions are probably responsible for its lifetime - 300 years (at least since it was first observed) and probably also for its color. Terrestrial observations between the years 1967-1969 showed that the material inside it moved counterclockwise and in a 12-day cycle, a finding confirmed by the Voyagers. These spacecraft also confirmed the existence of an interaction between the spot and many small atmospheric disturbances at the same latitude. The vignette photographs showed that the interior of the blob was quiet. The spot looks like a giant anticyclone (41). Based on information transmitted by the Galileo spacecraft on June 26.6.1996, 42, a thermal map of the Great Red Spot and its surroundings was prepared. The center of the spot appears colder than its surroundings. The center of the blob is a place where winds raise gases from below. The rising ammonia condenses and creates thick and high clouds, in the same way that air on Earth rises above humid areas and creates high water clouds. Warmer areas in the spot are found in its west and east, places where the rising winds are weaker. In the south is a warm zone, a place where the winds go down and it is less cloudy. In the northwestern region the atmosphere is warmer and drier. In the mapped area, the pressure is a quarter atmosphere (XNUMX).

In photographs taken on June 26.6.1996, 540, winds moving counter-clockwise at a speed of 43 km/h were observed on its outer rim. The spot is located between a westerly jet stream to the north and an easterly jet stream to the south. The center of the spot is relatively quiet and shows few changes over time (3). A very narrow area in the center of the spot rises rapidly from the depths of the atmosphere and raises humid and carbonated air to its surroundings above the ammonia clouds, similar to a large sprinkler in the garden (XNUMX).

Wind measurement between 1996-2006 showed that the Great Red Spot shrank by 15% during this period, although there was no change in its energy balance. There is a balance between the energy reaching it or leaving it, whether it mixes with the atmosphere around it, whether it swallows small storms, or whether the energy is radiated into space. There can be short-term violations in this balance and these are the ones that cause contraction - less energy reaches it (20).

A second red spot

The second red spot is actually the product of the merging of the 3 big storms mentioned in the storms chapter and their color was white. In November 2005 its colors started to change and in December 2005 it turned red. The one who noticed this for the first time was a Filipino amateur astronomer named Christopher Gu using a 33.6 cm telescope equipped with a CCD camera. Like the great red spot, it may also raise substances above the clouds, a place where the sun's ultraviolet radiation changes substances that change their color (chromophormers) to red. If this is indeed what is happening, the turning of the red into darker and darker means an intensification of the storm(44).

The size of the new spot is half the size of the big red spot. In infrared observations, bands of methane are prominent as in the Great Red Spot, this means that storms rise above the clouds for several kilometers, also like in the Great Red Spot (45). The two spots change their relative position within the atmosphere and occasionally pass by each other (46).

In 1979 the Voyagers measured a speed of 430 km/h in the storms that created the second red spot, in 2006 the speed measured in the new red spot by the Hubble telescope was 640 km/h, equal to the speed in the Great Red Spot. The change in speed is thought to explain the change in color. The second red spot behaves like the Great Red Spot for two reasons. The wind speed is the same and the color of both is the same. In both cases, gases are pulled from the depths of the atmosphere that change the color when exposed to the sun's ultraviolet radiation (47).

One of the substances that is thought to be brought up is the previously discovered phosphine (PH3). It is the ultraviolet radiation from the sun that can accelerate the change of color to red phosphorous (PH4) according to other estimates the phosphine can interact in the atmosphere with other substances such as methane or ammonia and form complex compounds such as methylphosphane or phosphaethylne or divalent sulfur which in different molecular configurations including chains and rings or pure sulfur such as S3-S20 (48).

The spot was also observed by the New Horizon spacecraft. The researchers compared two mosaic images taken by this spacecraft at a time interval of 30 minutes to track cloud movements and a speed of 615 km/h was measured. The spot is still developing (9).

Third red spot
A third red spot was discovered, although very small compared to the other two, to the west of the great red spot and at the same latitude as the band of clouds. He was also initially a white oval. Its color change to red shows that the swirling clouds of this storm are rising upwards as in the Great Red Spot (19).

other stains

One of the biggest surprises in the ultraviolet observation was another elliptical spot (dark oval) rotating around itself at the North Pole in the high atmospheric haze and the size of the Great Red Spot. This discovery provides researchers with new information about atmospheric circulations (8).

Spots are occasionally formed in the atmosphere and equally they also disappear. Some are colorful, some are light and sometimes they are dark. They are actually products of the dynamic nature of the atmosphere. In national observations, two spots were noticed that do not fall into this category. One of them is black found near the equator on 19.12.2003 and it has a feathery configuration. The second spot is round and black and is to the right of the big red spot. It is not clear whether the spot is atmospheric in nature or a product of the penetration of a foreign body into the atmosphere, such as Comet Shoemaker Levi in ​​1994.

The big moons cast a shadow over Jupiter. Their trajectories were also examined and in three separate studies no correlation was found between their shadow and this stain. The second spot was photographed on 22.10.2003 and near the location of the first spot. The person who photographed the first spot thought it was the Ganymede moon and there were those who sided with this possibility. Another possibility was also raised. As the bands of clouds move at different speeds, this patch rotated and positioned itself in a new location and its shape changed to one that was less distinct, and was observed 3 days later. In such a configuration he appeared in the first photograph (49).

Glow of electron jets

A phenomenon unique to Jupiter is the glow of electron salons (auroral electrojet). Infrared observations using the IRTF telescope (infrared telescope facility) in Hawaii are designed to measure the Doppler shift of emission waves of molecular hydrogen ions. Doppler shift makes it possible to measure the speed of ions in the auroral electrojet. This phenomenon takes place at the poles of Jupiter, places where the field lines of Jupiter merge and create a glow like on Earth only with a stronger intensity by thousands of meters. The electrojets are bound by the magnetic field to a plasma sheet of ions moving around Jupiter beyond the orbit of the moon Yo. Most of the ions in the plasmatic surface originate from this moon.

What happens is that this plasmic surface splashes out some of the stored rotational energy in Jupiter. It turned out that the plasmatic surface connects to Jupiter in a kind of electromagnetic friction that inhibits electric currents moving through it along Jupiter's magnetic field and then closes the switching along the aurora. It is this friction that can explain the high temperature in the upper atmosphere, above 700°C, more than what can be caused by the solar wind and the speed of movement of the ions is 10,000 km/h (50).

Aurora

In one of the observations made by the Hubble telescope, a glow the size of the Earth's diameter was observed at the poles of Jupiter. The glowing area grows to these dimensions in a few minutes and disappears just as quickly. This glow is believed to be caused by the interaction of electrons with the atmosphere, but they come from the planet itself and not from the solar wind.

There are researchers who think that the electrons come from volcanoes on the moon Yo, charged particles collide with these ions and move in a spiral motion towards Jupiter, energetically excited by Jupiter's magnetosphere and release light in a certain area near the North Pole and cause the same energy emission (51).

The Chandra X-ray Telescope showed that the glow emission is produced by oxygen ions and other elements that have lost most of their electrons. This means that these particles were accelerated to around millions of volts above Jupiter's poles. The presence of these high-energy ions shows that the cause of the planet's glow is different from that of Earth and Saturn. This high voltage, 10 million volts, could also explain the radio wave emission observed by the Ulysses spacecraft.

Jupiter's high rotation speed, powerful magnetic field, and abundance of particles from Jupiter's volcanic activity create a large supply of electrons and ions. This reservoir trapped in the magnetic field is continuously accelerated into the atmosphere above the poles, where it collides with gases and creates the aurora (6).

Comparative studies were made between Jupiter and Saturn. In one study comparing ultraviolet photographs of Jupiter's aurora taken by the Hubble telescope and the Cassini spacecraft in December 2000 and January 2001, they reached different conclusions as to the origin of this aurora. A high correlation was found between the solar wind and the behavior of Jupiter's aurora. The aurora found at the pole is directly related to the strength of the solar wind, which means that the processes that create the aurora are similar to terrestrial processes. A lot of energy is transferred from the solar wind to the planet, which is also responsible for Jupiter being hotter than previously thought. In a second study, Saturn's glow was examined for 3 weeks in January 2004, and here, too, photographs were compared between the Hubble and Cassini telescopes. The conclusion is that Saturn's glow is caused by the release of energy from the solar wind stored in its magnetic field (52).

And yet despite the conflicting conclusions and conclusions regarding the origin of the glow, it became clear that Jupiter leaves its mark on Jupiter in the form of a glow associated with its volcanic activity. This seal is called the Io footprint. In previous observations it was found that these traces are in the form of bright spots that are followed by other luminous spots. These spots are relatively downstream of the flow of charged particles around Jupiter. It turned out that these traces can also move upstream of the main stain. Each appearance of a leading spot has a unique pattern, with the main trace being led by a leading spot in the northern or southern hemisphere, followed by downstream spots in the southern hemisphere. Like a rock in a river, Yu creates resistance to the flow of particles around Jupiter. When the moon breaks the current, it creates a powerful plasma wave that flings the electrons into the atmosphere and creates glow spots (53).

Magnetosphere

Jupiter's magnetosphere is a bubble of ions that surrounds it, is tilted on its side and has an unexpected amount of high-energy particles leaking from one side of it. Electrons probably escape along the magnetic field lines adjacent to one side of Jupiter and in free form on the other side.

Some of the electrons are ejected from the magnetosphere and sometimes reach the Earth's environment. Jupiter's magnetosphere is so large that if it glowed at wavelengths that the eye can see it would appear from Earth to be twice as large as the Sun's disk. The dark side of the magnetosphere is surprisingly different from the bright side (2).

The Cassini spacecraft discovered that shock waves coming from the Sun and carried by the solar wind trigger the emission of radio waves from deep within Jupiter's magnetosphere and cause a brighting of the aurora at the poles. This phenomenon raises the idea that the electron density and electric flux in the magnetosphere are amplified when it comes into contact with the shock waves (54).

The New Horizon on its way to Pluto observed parts of the magnetosphere that could not be seen until now. It passed through the magnetosphere, which is hundreds of millions of kilometers away from Jupiter itself, which made it possible to examine the structure of this tail and examine its development as one moves away from the planet. It turned out that the tail has a complex structure and contains large drops of plasma (plasmoids) which are magnetically affected and tend down the tail at a relatively low speed. As the distance from Jupiter increases, the magnetotail becomes more and more structured and there are gradual changes in the plasma and the sharp boundaries (discontinuities) between the different plasma regimes on the weight of the wind regimes.

The spacecraft examined the solar wind "upstream" to Jupiter, during the transit near Jupiter and along its 2500 radii (about 175 million km) at the tail boundary of the magnetosphere (the name of this place is magnetopouse). The information broadcast to Israel showed that in the inner part of the magnetosphere's tail there are very hot ions that gradually cool and their speed slows down the tail, a process that begins at a distance of 100 Jupiter radii. In addition to the volcanic material ejected from the Moon Io and materials entering the magnetospheric tail from the solar wind, powerful eruptions of ionospheric hydrogen and H3+ that can only come from Jupiter's atmosphere have been detected (55).

magnetic field

Observations from Galileo and Cassini have given researchers the opportunity to better understand the twists and turns of the magnetic field. It turned out that the magnetic field lines curve in different directions depending on the latitudes. Near the equator they bend back when they encounter drag from the plasma disk and at high latitudes, the magnetic field lines bend forward when they come into contact with the solar wind (56).

A nebula of charged particles

At a distance of 22 million km from Jupiter, it is surrounded by a nebula of charged particles blown from the volcanoes of the moon Yo. These particles are captured by Jupiter's magnetic field as part of a formation known as Io turus. They stay there until they collide with electrons and then they become neutral as neutral atoms or molecules. They are no longer held by the magnetosphere and are blown away at speeds of up to 70 km/h. Instead of orbiting Jupiter, some of them are ionized again, lose an electron due to photon interception and are captured by the solar wind.

In the Cassini images, you can see the interaction between the magnetic field of Jupiter and the moon Yo. The shots were taken when Yu was behind Jupiter. Two bright blue regions could be seen in opposite directions to the Yo disk formed by sulfur dioxide molecules. These areas define the places where the magnetic field lines come into contact with the lunar soil with a power of 500,000 volts that excite the molecules. These bright spots are the terminals of this electric generator. These places move along the disk as the Moon moves around Jupiter, this disk changes its orientation according to the magnetic field (56).

radio waves

In 1992, the Ulysses spacecraft passed over the south pole on Jupiter and discovered an emission of radio waves from the southern hemisphere. These are radio signals that follow a regular pattern, like a beacon of a lighthouse that rotates regularly. Every 40 minutes a burst of radio waves was received, although it did not last long and for this reason it received the name quasi periodic or QP-40, this pattern lasted for several hours, faded and reappeared several hours later. The Chandra X-ray satellite detected similar pulses of QP-40 in X-rays emitted from hot spots in Jupiter's north pole. Based on Chandra's findings, it was decided to locate QP-40 at the North Pole when this satellite passed over the pole in October 2003 and these were indeed found. At the end of 2003 the signals became more and more clear. Here too there were short bursts every few minutes (57).

The Cassini spacecraft in its transit near Jupiter discovered low frequency radio waves in the charged gas particles that are in the space between Jupiter and the planets, the radio waves were translated into sound waves so that they could be listened to. They originate from waves created during the interaction between Jupiter's magnetic field and particles from the solar wind.

The oscillations in the radio waves originate from waves of acoustic ions which are the product of electrons moving in non-random patterns driven by the flow of energy. In this case the energy flux probably comes from the heat of Jupiter's shock wave. The shock wave is similar to the sonic boom of supersonic jet aircraft with one difference. In Jupiter's case the shock wave is caused by the supersonic solar wind deflected around Jupiter's magnetic field. The shock is where the solar wind is heated, slowed and deflected by Jupiter's magnetic field. The Cassini spacecraft probably did not reach the shock wave, but the shock is probably the source of the energy driving the waves that reached the spacecraft (58).

Later research revealed that a certain type of low-frequency radio waves is strong enough to accelerate electrons to high energies within Jupiter's magnetic field. The radio waves are driven by a combination of energy coming from the volcanoes of the moon Io and the rapid rotation of Jupiter around itself, volcanic gases are ionized and thrown away from Jupiter by the centrifugal force. This material is replaced by an internal flux of particles that excites the waves and those next to them excite the electrons (59).

Sources
39. Stiles L. – “Computer simulation suggests mechanisms the drive Juvian jet stream” 7.9.2005
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/jupiter-clouds-05c.html
40. "Jet streams on giant planets" 14.10.2008
Http://www.spacedaily.com/Reports/Jet_Streams_On_Giant_Planets_999.html
41. "The nature of the great red spot"
http://www.space.com/reference/brit/jupiter/climate.html
42. "Catalog information for GLL image" 9.10.1996
http://www.psimage.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/GCBGENCatalogpage.pr?10091996
43. PIA00720: Time series of the great red spot (near infra filter)
Http:// photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00720
44. Phillip t. - "New red spot growing fast on Jupiter" 6.3.2006
Http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_Red_Spot_Growing_Fast_On_Jupiter.html
45. "Hubble takes sharpest shot yet of new red spot on Jupiter" 5.5.2006 Http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Hubble_Takes_Sharpest_Spot_ Yet_Of_New_Spot_On_Jupiter.html
46. ​​"Jupiter's two hot spots have a close encounter moment" 21.7.06
http://www.specalflightnow.com/news/n0607/21jupiter
47. Steigerwald B. - "Juvian junior red spot growing stronger" 11.10.2006
Http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Juvian_Jounior_Red_Spot_Growing_Stronger_999.html
48. "Junior spots zips past great red spot on Jupiter" 1.8.2006
Http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Junior_Spots_Zips_Past_Great_Red_Spot_On_Jupiter_999.html
49. Brit RR – “Mystery spot on Jupiter baffles astronomers” 23.10.2003
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/jupiter-dark-spot031023.html
50. "Supertonic winds seen in Jupiter's atmosphere" 12.5.1999
http://www.spaceviews.com/1999/05/12a.html
51. Whitehouse D. – "Jupiter's northern lights" 12.4.2001
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid-127200/11272268.stm
52. "Solar wind whips up auroral storms on Jupiter and Saturn" 31.3.2006
Http://www.spacedaily.com/Solar_Wind_Whips_Up_Auroral_Storms_On_Jupiter_And_Saturen.html
53. "Novel spots found on Jupiter" 18.3.2008
Http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Novel_Spots_Found_On_Jupiter_999.html
54. "Solar winds buffet vast Jupiter region, team approach reveals" 27.2.2002
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/news/release/press0202227.html
55. "New horizon SWAP instrument reveals complex structure, diverse, plasma, population in Jupiter's magnetotail" 11.10.2007
Http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_Horizon_SWAP_ Instruments_Reveals_Complex_Structure_Diverse_Plasma_Population_In_ Jupiter's_Magnetotail_999.html
56. Foust J. – “Duo untangle mysteries of Jupiter magnetic field” 3.6.2001
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0106/03jup
57. "Ulysses and Jupiter - second rendezvous" 29.1.2004
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?/objectid-34541
58. "Bizarre new sounds of Jupiter" 30.12.2000
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/acoustic/
59. "New discovery at Jupiter could help protect earth - orbit satellites" 10.3.2008
Http://www.spacmart.com/New_Discovery_At_Jupiter_Could_Help_Protect_Earth_Orbit_Satellites_999.html