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------------ 1880 - Jupiter gets another visitor.
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- Everyone knows the planet Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System. The most massive, the fastest rotating, the most magnetism, the most satellites at 67. Jupiter is 318 times the mass of the Earth. Its volume is 1,400 times that of Earth.
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- Yet, beneath those swirling colorful clouds lies many secrets. A space probe in 1995 descending through the atmosphere into 23 times Earth’s atmospheric pressure. It was expected to pass through 3 layers of atmosphere, Ammonia ( NH3), Ammonia Hydrosulfide ( NH4SH), and water ( H2O). The biggest surprise was the lack of a water cloud layer in this particular descent. Also, astronomers expected to find between 3% to 13% by mass of elements heavier than helium. That is wide range demonstrating our lack of knowledge of Jupiter’s composition and weather.
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- Textbooks today give Jupiter a small solid rock core, with ice, then a layer of molecular hydrogen. It is this metallic hydrogen that creates the planet’s large magnetic field. The massive planet spins one rotation every 10 hours. Infrared wavelengths are not reflected sunlight but gas emissions form below the upper clouds.
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- The strong magnetosphere around Jupiter has rapped electrons around the equator that are reaching a million electron volts (1 MeV). This magnetosphere stretches all the way to the moon , Io. Io orbits ever 42 hours. The strong gravity variations create volcanic activity releasing sulfur dioxide. The magnetic forces separate these neutral atoms in to ionized sulfur and oxygen atoms. This huge “ doughnut “ of charged particles radiate 1 ½ terawatts of ultraviolet energy.
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- There are intense aurora emissions in the upper atmosphere that span the spectrum from X-rays to radio wavelengths ( like the Northern Lights at Earth’s North Pole). These aurora stretch all the way to Io. This Jupiter-Io connection is the source of radio bursts that astronomers have been monitoring for decades. These electric fields carry millions of amperes of electric current.
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- The Juno spacecraft will arrive and attain a Jupiter orbit in July, 2016. 53 day orbits will slowly descend to 14 day orbits. It will use Doppler Shifts of radio transmissions from Juno to map the planet’s uneven gravity field and internal mass distribution. It will measurer the energy in these auroras, positive ions 5eV to 50 KeV and electron charges 100eV to 100 Kev.
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- Juno will measure the upper layers of atmosphere detecting CH4, H2O, NH3, PH3 molecules. It will map the magnetic field, measure the electromagnetic waves form 600 Mhz to 22 Ghz, and the H2O and NH3 concentrations in each layer of atmosphere. Provide ultraviolet spectrometer images and a distribution of the radio and plasma waves.
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- All, if all goes well. Wish Juno luck. Stay tuned, an announcement will be made shortly.
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- Request these Reviews to learn more about Jupiter:
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- #1175 - The 4 moons of Jupiter. Ganymede would be a planet if it were circling the Sun instead of Jupiter. Callisto is about the size of Mercury.
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- # 927 - Europa is 90% the size of our Moon. It has an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy crust.
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- #797 - Jupiter has rings. 11 Earth diameters span Jupiter’s 88,846 mile diameter.
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- #29 - Our gaseous planets. Four pages of statistics comparing the 4 planets.
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----- 707-536-3272 ---------------- Wednesday, June 1, 2016 -----
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