The James Webb Space Telescope will soon set its sights on the king of the solar system, the gas giant Jupiter.
Jupiter is a complex system full of mysteries, which holds many questions about the nature of its delicate rings, how its largest moons can harbor oceans of water or hidden volcanoes, and how massive storms like the Great Red Spot form in its turbulent atmosphere. on the giant planet. . Researchers say the planet will be the perfect “testing ground” for the James Webb Space Telescope, the $10 billion observatory that will show its first operational images on July 12.
“This is going to be a really challenging experiment,” study co-leader Imke de Pater, a planetary scientist at the University of California, said of Webb’s upcoming Jupiter studies in a 2020 consortium statement (opens in new section).
“Jupiter is so bright and Webb’s instruments are so sensitive that observing both the bright planet and its fainter rings and moons will be an excellent test of how to get the most out of Webb,” added de Pater, who led the study with Thierry Fouche of the Paris Observatory.
Live Updates: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Mission Related: How the James Webb Space Telescope Works in Pictures
Jupiter is a bright target that will require precise calibration of Webb’s instruments to keep the planet from washing out in the telescope’s sensitive optics. The gas giant is also spinning rapidly, making it more difficult to capture a time-lapse image for scientific observations.
But once those hurdles are overcome, scientists say they look forward to new insights using Webb’s unique 18-segment mirror and four infrared instruments.
Jupiter’s atmospheric research will feature prominently. For example, the telescope will study enigmatic cyclonic storms in the polar region, also under observation by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, to look at their winds, clouds, gas and temperature.
Webb will also look at the atmosphere just above the rotating Great Red Spot, which has unexplained temperature variations (for example, the atmosphere just above is much colder than other areas of Jupiter.)
Next, the team hopes to spot new moons in Jupiter’s rings. That will be particularly challenging because the planet’s bright light can wash out the faint ring system, made up of tiny and rare dust particles, officials said. (Strategies to deal with this problem could help future exoplanet observers using Webb see faint worlds next to bright stars.)
Cyclones surround Jupiter’s north pole in this infrared image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. (Image: NASA, Caltech, SwRI, ASI, INAF, JIRAM)
Then there are the large moons of Jupiter. This first set of studies will examine icy Ganymede and volcanic Io to gain more insight into how these worlds formed and changed over time.
Ganymede’s outer atmosphere will be imaged by Webb to “better understand the moon’s interaction with particles in Jupiter’s magnetic field,” the researchers said. Webb will also search for a suspected brackish ocean beneath Ganymede’s surface.
Io’s research will include searching for “stealth volcanoes,” which researchers suspect erupt without spewing any dust particles that would better reflect light for telescopes to see.
However, Webb has higher spatial resolution than previous missions to Jupiter (including Voyager and Galileo), allowing it to potentially spot stealth volcanoes along with “hotspots.” The high temperature concentrations on Io’s surface may be similar to what is seen in volcanism on Earth, but more research is needed to confirm Galileo’s observations in the 1990s and 2000s.
The telescope will also look in detail at Io’s temperature structure, which until now is relatively unknown because not much data has been collected about the temperature at different heights of the moon’s atmosphere, the statement said.
NASA’s Galileo spacecraft captured Jupiter’s moon Io, the planet’s third largest moon, during a volcanic eruption. (Image: NASA/JPL/DLR)
As Webb directs its optics at Jupiter from deep space, observatories orbiting closer to the planet will provide assistance. For example, Webb’s long-range view of Jupiter’s atmosphere and will provide valuable context for Juno orbiting Jupiter.
“No one observatory or spacecraft can do it all,” Michael Wong, co-investigator at the University of California, Berkeley, said in the same statement. “We are very excited about combining data from multiple observatories to tell us much more than we could learn from just one source.”
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).
Add Comment