NASA’s Juno spacecraft detects “Monster” Cyclones on Jupiter’s Surface

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26 May 2017, 9:00 am

US, May 26, 2017: Scientists looking at the first pictures of the planet Jupiter sent by the NASA probe Juno were shocked at what they saw: monster cyclones, hundreds of kilometers wide, tearing across the planet's north and south poles.

The scientists said the poles are nothing like the planet's familiar placid and colorful equatorial region.

This image made available by NASA on May 25, 2017, and made from data captured by the Juno spacecraft shows Jupiter's south pole. The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in diameter. VOA

"That's the Jupiter we've all known and grown to love," Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute, an applied research and development organization in San Antonio, Texas, said in an article released Thursday in the journal Science. "And when you look from the pole, it looks totally different. … I don't think anybody would have guessed this is Jupiter."

Bolton called the findings "Earth-shattering. Or, should I say, Jupiter-shattering.

FILE – NASA's enhanced-color image of a mysterious dark spot on Jupiter shows a Jovian "galaxy" of swirling storms in this image captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft, Feb. 2, 2017, at an altitude of 9,000 miles (14,500 kilometers) above Jupiter's cloud tops. VOA

Along with the fierce storms, the researchers saw a huge river of ammonia gas extending from Jupiter's deep atmosphere down to its interior. They said they thought the ammonia might be part of what's causing the huge storms.

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NASA had launched Juno in 2011, and it reached Jupiter's orbit last year. The scientists said that Juno's next fly-by would come in July, when it will take pictures of the planet's trademark Great Red Spot — a huge, hurricane-like storm that experts say has been raging for hundreds of years. (VOA)

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