May 29, 2023 04:16 PM
NASA scientists identify polar cyclone swirling on mysterious Uranus
https://www.livescience.com/space/uranus...r-1st-time
INTRO:A vortex of relatively warm air has been detected swirling beneath Uranus' clouds, providing strong evidence for the existence of a cyclone anchored at the planet's north pole.
The findings add fuel to the fire that Uranus is not as atmospherically inert as it initially seemed when NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past the "ice giant" in January 1986.
The discovery of a northern vortex on Uranus was made through the detection of thermal emission in the form of radio waves picked up by astronomers using the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes in New Mexico. (MORE - details)
PAPER: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.15521
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/mdVxuw3hECo
The mystery of Jupiter's ever-changing stripes may finally be solved
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-mystery...-be-solved
INTRO: Tigers may not change their stripes, but Jupiter sure does. The giant planet's surprisingly neat, alternating bands of dark and light clouds periodically change their appearance, but the reason for these cyclic variations is a mystery.
Now, after studying data on Jupiter's magnetic field collected by the Juno probe, a team of scientists from Japan, Spain, and the UK think they've cracked it. The changes seen in Jupiter's stripes coincide with magnetic oscillations inside the gas world.
"It is possible to get wavelike motions in a planetary magnetic field which are called torsional oscillations," explains mathematician Chris Jones of the University of Leeds in the UK.
"The exciting thing is that when we calculated the periods of these torsional oscillations, they corresponded to the periods that you see in the infrared radiation on Jupiter." (MORE - details)
PAPER: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01967-1
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/CmW-tctT6Y4
https://www.livescience.com/space/uranus...r-1st-time
INTRO:A vortex of relatively warm air has been detected swirling beneath Uranus' clouds, providing strong evidence for the existence of a cyclone anchored at the planet's north pole.
The findings add fuel to the fire that Uranus is not as atmospherically inert as it initially seemed when NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past the "ice giant" in January 1986.
The discovery of a northern vortex on Uranus was made through the detection of thermal emission in the form of radio waves picked up by astronomers using the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes in New Mexico. (MORE - details)
PAPER: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.15521
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/mdVxuw3hECo
The mystery of Jupiter's ever-changing stripes may finally be solved
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-mystery...-be-solved
INTRO: Tigers may not change their stripes, but Jupiter sure does. The giant planet's surprisingly neat, alternating bands of dark and light clouds periodically change their appearance, but the reason for these cyclic variations is a mystery.
Now, after studying data on Jupiter's magnetic field collected by the Juno probe, a team of scientists from Japan, Spain, and the UK think they've cracked it. The changes seen in Jupiter's stripes coincide with magnetic oscillations inside the gas world.
"It is possible to get wavelike motions in a planetary magnetic field which are called torsional oscillations," explains mathematician Chris Jones of the University of Leeds in the UK.
"The exciting thing is that when we calculated the periods of these torsional oscillations, they corresponded to the periods that you see in the infrared radiation on Jupiter." (MORE - details)
PAPER: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-023-01967-1
VIDEO: https://youtu.be/CmW-tctT6Y4