Movement at Jupiter's South Pole

This animation depicts the invisible forces at work at Jupiter's south pole that keep the five circumpolar cyclones there in position relative to each other and to the polar cyclone – the central cyclone directly over the pole. Blue arrows depict the forces that drive the cyclones southward, toward the polar cyclone. Green arrows depict the rejections force generated by the polar cyclone, preventing the circumpolar cyclones from occupying the pole position. Pink arrows demonstrate mutual forces the circumpolar cyclones project, causing them to remain an equal distance from one another, in a pentagonal configuration. Data used to generate this animation was acquired by the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft. JIRAM "sees" in infrared light not visible to the human eye. It was designed to capture the infrared light emerging from deep inside Jupiter, probing the weather layer down to 30 to 45 miles (50 to 70 kilometers) below Jupiter's cloud tops. Movie available at https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA24968

Date

2021-10-28

Photographer / author

NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

Collection

JPL

Archive

NASA Image and Video Library

Type

illustration (NASA artwork)

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