Jupiter continues to reveal new and unexpected attributes to the Juno space probe. The mission led by NASA and San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute is the subject of a special issue of the journal Nature.
The articles present a more refined analysis of data the project has been releasing and talking about for more than a year.
Jupiter's colored bands and atmosphere extend roughly 2,000 miles into the planet. It's one of the many surprises the team running NASA's Juno mission wrote about in last week’s articles.
Another was the violent wind patterns below the upper atmosphere. One study showed that in addition to miles deep cyclones at the poles, Jupiter’s inner atmosphere whiplashes between 100 meters per second from one zone and belt to the next.
The search for the massive planet’s core continues.
"We don't see anything that looks like a core,” said principal investigator and SwRI scientist Scott Bolton. “There may be a core of heavy elements in there. So that was the first picture that started to go out the window."
A year after that interview, scientists still haven't found that compact core. Instead, Bolton said in an interview with the CBCs Quirks and Quarks, they see an extremely large middle-range core that Bolton describes as probably being partially dissolved.
Paul Flahive can be reached at paul@tpr.org or follow him on Twitter @paulflahive
