A new discovery has been made about planet Jupiter's stripes and the findings suggest that the stripes are much deeper than what scientists had previously thought.
NASA's Juno probe has revealed many interesting facts about Jupiter. The probe says that the bold and colorful stripes run deep down the surface of the planet, reports Space.com. They are actually clouds, which optical light cannot penetrate and thus, it is difficult to detect what lies underneath. However, Juno possesses microwave instruments and they can probe the clouds at different depths and are capable of peeling back the clouds like layers of an onion.
Principal investigator Scott Bolton said that the structure of the zones and belts exist deep down and therefore, the elements responsible for making the stripes and colors exist pretty far down into the planet. He further stated that the new images have penetrated quite deeper into the cloud layer and they suggest that the bands seen on the cloud tops are not similar to the ones seen in the following layers.
This revelation was quite shocking to the scientists but this was not all. The Juno Cam, a visible-light camera, took a photograph of the planet's terminator line- the place where night turns to day and it was found that a cyclone was rising above the main atmospheric layer. It appeared to be about 52 miles tall in height and around 4,300 miles in breadth.
It also shed light on the auroras and the gravitational field of Jupiter and here also, surprises lay in store. The auroras are not what they had perceived them to be. In fact, the model that the scientists had been using for the auroras has come into question and now the researchers are trying to sort it out. They have landed a new mission of discovery and will be making efforts in future to understand the complex system.
All in all, this Juno probe has made it pretty clear to the astronomers that they have a lot more to learn about the happenings taking place inside Jupiter. The probe is still on and new findings are sure to be made in future.