Jupiter's Mysterious High-Speed Jet Stream Unveiled By Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope from NASA has unveiled a high-velocity jet stream within Jupiter's atmosphere. This recently disclosed fast-moving jet stream spans a remarkable 4,800 kilometers in width and is located above Jupiter's equator, positioned well beyond its primary cloud layers. The planet's high-speed jet stream was clocked at approximately 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour). This is an unprecedented discovery, never observed before.

According to the official website of the James Webb Space Telescope, the discovery of this jet is giving insights into how the layers of Jupiter's famously turbulent atmosphere interact with each other and how Webb is uniquely capable of tracking those features.

"This is something that totally surprised us," said Ricardo Hueso of the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, the lead author of the paper describing the findings. "What we have always seen as blurred hazes in Jupiter's atmosphere now appear as crisp features that we can track along with the planet's fast rotation."

The research team analyzed data from Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured in July 2022. The Early Release Science program, jointly led by Imke de Pater from the University of California, Berkeley, and Thierry Fouchet from the Observatory of Paris, was designed to take images of Jupiter 10 hours apart, or one Jupiter day, in four different filters, each uniquely able to detect changes in small features at different altitudes of Jupiter's atmosphere.

"Even though various ground-based telescopes, spacecraft like NASA's Juno and Cassini, and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have observed the Jovian system's changing weather patterns, Webb has already provided new findings on Jupiter's rings, satellites, and its atmosphere," de Pater noted.