- Original Caption Released with Image:
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With its Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), half of the Ralph
instrument, New Horizons captured several pictures of mesoscale gravity
waves in Jupiter's equatorial atmosphere. Buoyancy waves of this type are
seen frequently on Earth - for example, they can be caused when air flows
over a mountain and a regular cloud pattern forms downstream. In Jupiter's
case there are no mountains, but if conditions in the atmosphere are just
right, it is possible to form long trains of these small waves. The source
of the wave excitation seems to lie deep in Jupiter's atmosphere, below
the visible cloud layers at depths corresponding to pressures 10 times
that at Earth's surface. The New Horizons measurements showed that the
waves move about 100 meters per second faster than surrounding clouds;
this is about 25% of the speed of sound on Earth and is much greater than
current models of these waves predict. Scientists can "read" the speed and
patterns these waves to learn more about activity and stability in the
atmospheric layers below.
- Image Credit:
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NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute
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