New radio map of Jupiter reveals ammonia plumes beneath clouds
New radio map of Jupiter reveals ammonia plumes beneath clouds
The nature of the gas giant’s atmosphere has long been something of a puzzle, but radio wave data has allowed scientists to peek beneath planet’s clouds
Nicola Davis
@NicolaKSDavis
Thursday 2 June 2016 14.00 EDT
Huge plumes of ammonia have been found beneath the clouds of Jupiter, providing new insights into the planet’s dynamic atmosphere, scientists say.
Nearly 780 million kilometres from the sun and the largest planet in the solar system, the gas giant Jupiter has long fascinated astronomers. But the nature of its atmosphere has been something of a puzzle.
Jupiter’s clouds are known to be made from ammonia ice, but what is happening beneath that has proved challenging to unpick. “From the clouds themselves you cannot deduce how much ammonia is deeper down,” said Imke de Pater, professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-authored the research.
In the 1980s, researchers working with the radio telescopes of what is now known as the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico found that the atmosphere of Jupiter contained very little ammonia - with the gas estimated to account for around 0.01% of its composition, says de Pater. But when the Galileo space probe hurtled through Jupiter’s atmosphere in 1995, descending more than 100 km, it detected levels of ammonia four to five times higher than expected.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jun/02/new-radio-map-of-jupiter-reveals-ammonia-plumes-beneath-clouds
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It's a giant ball of windex. 
