Geology topics

Research about Jupiter

Source-linked reports with geographic coverage including Jupiter.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2012

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 at Jupiter

From the 16th to the 22nd of July, 1994, the world was privileged to witness an event that probably recurs less often than once a century. Collision of the brightest nuclei of Periodic Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 produced enormous dark clouds that were the most dramatic and easily observed features on Jupiter recorded by human visual observation. They were seen by tens of thousands of people through hundreds or thousands of telescopes ranging in aperture from 5 to more than 100 cm. Tens of millions of people participated vicariously in the impact event through viewing on television the magnificent images from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and from numerous ground-based telescopes.

Geophysical Research Letters↗

USGS2012

Numerical simulations of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact plumes and clouds: A progress report

Preliminary 2D/3D numerical simulations were carried out for the penetration of 1-km bodies in the Jovian atmosphere and the subsequent rise and collapse of the erupted plumes. A body that crushed at a stagnation point pressure of 5 kbar produced a plume that rose to 800 km. Evolution of the shape of the calculated plume corresponds rather well to the plumes observed by HST. A crescent-shaped lobe centered on the “backfire” azimuth was produced by lateral flow during plume collapse. The plumes observed on Jupiter rose about 4 times higher, and their rise and fall times were about twice those in this calculation. Plume height is a sensitive function of the distribution of energy along the entry path; a very low-strength body will disintegrate higher along the penetration path and will produce a higher plume.

Geophysical Research Letters↗

USGS1995

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observing campaign on comet Shoemaker-Levy 9

The Hubble Space Telescope made systematic observations of the split comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) (P designates a periodic comet) starting in July 1993 and continuing through mid-July 1994 when the fragments plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere. Deconvolutions of Wide Field Planetary Camera images indicate that the diameters of some fragments may have been as large as ∼2 to 4 kilometers, assuming a geometric albedo of 4 percent, but significantly smaller values (that is, < 1 kilometer) cannot be ruled out. Most of the fragments (or nuclei) were embedded in circularly symmetric inner comae from July 1993 until late June 1994, implying that there was continuous, but weak, cometary activity. At least a few nuclei fragmented into separate, condensed objects well after the breakup of the SL9 parent body, which argues against the hypothesis that the SL9 fragments were swarms of debris with no dominant, central bodies. Spectroscopic observations taken on 14 July 1994 showed an outburst in magnesium ion emission that was followed closely by a threefold increase in continuum emission, which may have been caused by the electrostatic charging and subsequent explosion of dust as the comet passed from interplanetary space into the jovian magnetosphere. No OH emission was detected, but the derived upper limit on the H 2 O production rate of ∼10 27 molecules per second does not necessarily imply that the object was water-poor.

Science↗

USGS1970

Jupiter: His limb darkening and the magnitude of his internal energy source

The most accurate infrared photometric observations (8 to 14 microns) to date of the average limb darkening of Jupiter have been combined with the most refined deduction of jovian model atmospheres in which flux constancy has been closely maintained in the upper regime of radiative equilibrium and a much more accurate approximation of the 10- and 16-micron vibration-rotation bands of ammonia has been incorporated. The theoretically predicted emergent specific intensity has been multiplied by the spectral response function and folded (mathematically convolved - intersmeared) with the spatial response function of the atmosphere-telescope-photometer combination. The resulting comparison indicates that Jupiter is radiating from three to four times as much power as the planet is receiving from the sun.

Science↗