An instrument designed to study exoplanets found in northern Chile has been able to detect wind speeds on Jupiter. The object belongs to the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and demonstrated our ability to observe distant atmospheres directly from our planet.
The spectrometer is called ESPRESSO (short for… Echelle Spectrograph of rocky exoplanets and stable spectroscopic observations) on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) with the aim of searching for exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system. The goal is to study celestial objects and identify changes in starlight that could indicate the presence of an exoplanet.
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How were Jupiter's winds discovered?
The study used a technique called Doppler velocimetry, which was applied to sunlight reflected from the clouds of the largest planet in our solar system.
This happened for five hours in July 2019, when the VLT team pointed the instrument toward Jupiter's equatorial region, where the clouds are higher, darker and hotter.
By measuring the change in the wavelength of light reflected from the planet compared to the telescope on Earth, it was possible to calculate the speed of clouds and winds there, and he explained. Phys.org.
results
ESPRESSO was able to successfully measure the winds on Jupiter, in addition to making other discoveries:
- The wind speed on the planet ranges from 60 to 428 km/h.
- Furthermore, Jupiter's atmosphere at cloud level contains ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide, and water, which are responsible for the red and white streaks that can be seen from afar.
- The study also stated that the upper clouds are located in a pressure region ranging from 0.6 to 0.9 bar, and are composed of ammonia ice, which affects the dynamics of the planet’s atmosphere.
These discoveries help unravel Jupiter's atmospheric phenomena, as well as show how it is now possible to observe planets light-years away from our own backyard.
Hey Space.com website It also highlights how the same technique can be applied to discover more phenomena in the universe, such as studying the same dynamics on Saturn.
