You may have heard of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter. This anticyclone, thousands of miles long, has graced the surface of the gas giant for hundreds of years. But Jupiter isn’t the only planet in our solar system where it can be windy. It also jets long and hard on Saturn.
Saturn may be less hot than its big brother Jupiter, but it is certainly no less distinct. according to New study Also on this gas giant – nine times the size of Earth – there are huge, centuries-old storms that have a significant impact deep into the planet’s atmosphere.
Giant tornadoes
American astronomers have studied the planet’s radio waves that come from beneath the surface. In doing so, they discovered long-term disturbances of ammonia in the atmosphere that indicate the presence of storms.
Scientists have also been able to calculate how often massive storms occur: every twenty to thirty years and they are comparable to hurricanes on Earth, although they are much larger on the gas planet. What is also different from our hurricanes is that no one knows how these huge storms form on Saturn. The planet’s atmosphere is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium with some traces of methane, water and ammonia.
meteorological limits
So now astronomers are trying to learn more about the storms. “By better understanding the mechanisms behind the largest storms in our solar system, we can put hurricane theory into a broader cosmic context. In this way, we sharpen current knowledge and push the boundaries of meteorology on Earth,” says lead researcher Cheng Li.
Together with Professor Emeritus of Astronomy Imke de Pater, who has studied gas giants for four decades, they used the Very Large radio telescope in New Mexico to investigate radio emissions from deep within the planet. “We’re looking for radio waves under the visible layers of clouds on the giant planets. Because chemical reactions and dynamics change the composition of a planet’s atmosphere, observations from below these clouds are crucial to knowing the true atmospheric composition of the planet. This is an important parameter for models of planet formation,” she explains. “Radio observations help map dynamic, physical, and chemical processes such as heat transfer, cloud formations, and atmospheric convection—the appearance of hot air bubbles—on a planetary and local scale.”
Giant storms in the northern hemisphere
But scientists discovered something surprising in the radio waves emitted by the planet: there were deviations in the concentration of ammonia gas in the atmosphere. They were able to link these anomalies to a number of massive storms in the planet’s northern hemisphere.
The ammonia concentration is low at moderate elevations, below the upper cloud layer of ammonia ice, but thickest at lower elevations, 100 to 200 km deep in the atmosphere. According to scientists, ammonia is transported from the upper atmosphere to the lower atmosphere by precipitation and re-evaporation. This effect can last for hundreds of years.
Neighborhoods are completely different
The study also shows that while both Saturn and Jupiter are made of hydrogen gas, the gas giants are very different. For example, Jupiter also has tropospheric anomalies, but they are related to its regions – the light and dark rings visible on the planet. It is not caused by storms, as in Saturn. This large difference between neighboring planets raises questions about what scientists now know about the formation of giant storms on gas giants and other planets, and may aid the search for exoplanets in the future.
Jupiter and Saturn are neighbors. Jupiter is the fifth planet in the solar system from the Sun, and Saturn is the sixth. Both planets are massive gas giants, which means they don’t have a solid surface. Its core consists of silicates and minerals. This is followed by a layer of metallic hydrogen – hydrogen that behaves like liquid metal under very high pressure – and finally low molecular hydrogen. This mantle ensures that there is a magnetic field around the planets. Gas giants have an atmosphere in which there are also very terrestrial meteorological phenomena, such as clouds and winds. Only the clouds have all kinds of colors and the winds blow harder and longer: huge storms can last for centuries, like the famous Great Red Spot on Jupiter. This is a storm that has been going on for hundreds of years. It can also be very windy on distant planets. Lightning is at least a hundred times more powerful than it is here, and we also know both gas giants from the beautiful rings around their planet. It is several kilometers thick and actually consists of at least 100,000 small rings containing rock and ice. Another common feature: they have a lot of moons. Jupiter has at least 79. Think of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Saturn has 65 moons, of which the largest and most famous is Titan.
differences
So aren’t there differences? Yes, because although they are almost equal in diameter, Saturn’s mass is only one-third that of Jupiter. As a result, Saturn has a much smaller density, even the lowest of all the planets. Its density is less than that of water, so it is sometimes said that Saturn will float if you throw it into a huge ocean. A consequence of that lower mass is that Saturn also has less gravity on the surface. As a result, cloud layers are spread over a larger area. The layers extend to depths greater than those on Jupiter.
Although the clouds are made of the same substance—ammonia, ammonium, hydrogen sulfide, and water ice particles—they aren’t as prominent. The storms and spots are less visible than they are on Jupiter, which makes the planet less picturesque. Finally, Saturn’s rotation is slightly slower than that of Jupiter, and this, combined with its lower mass, results in a weaker magnetic field.
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