The James Webb space telescope will soon turn its eyes to the king of the solar system, the gas giant Jupiter.
Jupiter is a complex system full of mysteries, which hosts realms of questions about the nature of its delicate rings, how its larger moons can harbor oceans of water or hidden volcanoes, and how massive storms such as the Great Red Spot form. turbulent atmosphere of the giant planet. . The planet will be the perfect “test field,” researchers say, for the James Webb Space Telescope, the $ 10 billion observatory that will show its first operational images on July 12th.
“It will be a really challenging experiment,” said co-leader of the study Imke de Pater, a planetary scientist at the University of California, on Webb’s upcoming Jupiter studies in a 2020 consortium statement (opens in a new tab).
“Jupiter is so bright and Webb’s instruments are so sensitive, that observing both, the bright planet and its weaker rings and moons, will be an excellent test of how to get the most out of Webb,” he added. Pater, who directs. the study with Thierry Fouchet of the Observatoire de Paris.
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Jupiter is a bright target that will require accurate calibrations of Webb instruments, so as not to wash the planet from the sensitive optics of the telescope. The gas giant also rotates rapidly, making it more difficult to make a time-lapse image to make scientific observations.
But once these obstacles are overcome, scientists say they expect new ideas using Webb’s only 18-segment mirror and four infrared instruments.
Atmospheric studies of Jupiter will have a prominent place. For example, the telescope will study enigmatic cyclone storms in the polar region, also under scrutiny by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, to observe its winds, clouds, gas and temperature.
Webb will also look at the atmosphere just above the Great Red Spot, which has unexplained temperature variations (e.g., the atmosphere just above is much colder than other areas of Jupiter).
Further away, the team hopes to detect new moons in Jupiter’s rings. This will be especially difficult, as bright light from the planet can clean up the faint ring system made up of tiny, scattered dust particles, officials said. (Strategies to deal with this problem may help future exoplanet observers use Webb to see faint worlds next to bright stars).
Storks surround Jupiter’s north pole in this infrared image of NASA’s Juno spacecraft. (Image credit: NASA, Caltech, SwRI, ASI, INAF, JIRAM)
Then there are the great moons of Jupiter. This first set of studies will examine the frozen Ganymedes and the volcanic Io to learn more about how these worlds formed and changed over time.
Webb will photograph Ganymede’s outer atmosphere to “better understand the moon’s interaction with Jupiter’s magnetic field particles,” the researchers said. Webb will also look for a suspicious ocean of salt water beneath the surface of Ganymede.
Io’s research will include a search for “stealthy volcanoes,” which researchers suspect are erupting without scattering dust particles that better reflect light for telescopes to see.
Webb, however, has a higher space resolution than previous missions to Jupiter (including Voyager and Galileo), allowing it to potentially detect stealthy volcanoes along with “hot spots.” High-temperature concentrations on the surface of Io may be similar to those seen with Earth’s volcanism, but more studies are needed to confirm Galileo’s observations in the 1990s and 2000s.
The telescope will also examine in detail the structure of the temperature of Io, which is so far relatively unknown, as not much data on temperature has been collected at different altitudes in the Moon’s atmosphere, according to the statement.
NASA’s Galileo spacecraft captured the moon of Jupiter Io, the third largest moon on the planet, in a volcanic eruption. (Image credit: NASA / JPL / DLR)
As Webb turns his optics to Jupiter from deep space, observatories orbiting closer to the planet will offer help. For example, Webb’s long-range view of Jupiter’s atmosphere and its will provide a valuable context for Juno orbiting Jupiter.
“No observatory or spacecraft can do it all,” study co-researcher Michael Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, said in the same statement. “We are very excited to combine data from multiple observatories to tell us much more than we could learn from a single source.”
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