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Convective storms in closed cyclones in Jupiter's South Temperate Belt: (I) observations

Wong, Michael H.; Baines, Kevin H.; Hueso, Ricardo +19 more

On May 31, 2020 a short-lived convective storm appeared in one of the small cyclones of Jupiter's South Temperate Belt (STB) at planetographic latitude 30.8°S. The outbreak was captured by amateur astronomer Clyde Foster in methane-band images, became widely known as Clyde's Spot, and was imaged at very high resolution by the Junocam instrument on…

Convective storms in closed cyclones in Jupiter: (II) numerical modeling

Hueso, Ricardo; Sánchez-Lavega, Agustín; Legarreta, Jon +1 more

On May 31, 2020 a convective storm appeared in one small cyclone in the South Temperate Belt (STB) of Jupiter. The storm, nicknamed as Clyde's Spot, had an explosive start and quickly diminished in activity in a few days. However, it left a highly turbulent cyclone as a remnant that evolved to become a turbulent segment of the STB in a time-scale …

Flow patterns of Jupiter's south polar region

Hansen, C. J.; Bolton, S.; Peach, D. +11 more

Previous studies of Jupiter's wind patterns revealed the southernmost two prograde jets at 58°S and 64°S (planetocentric), which we designate as the S5 and S6 jets, respectively, but the jets and the wind patterns further poleward were not well defined. The Juno mission has provided the first opportunity to study the South Polar Region (SPR). Here…

Analysis of the long-term drift rates and oscillations of Jupiter's largest vortices

Simon, Amy A.; Morales-Juberías, Raúl; Cosentino, Richard G.

Jupiter's troposphere is dynamically characterized by a series of alternating eastward and westward jets. Embedded between these alternating jets, large vortices, characterized by their high speed closed circulations can be found in several latitudinal bands. The Great Red Spot (GRS) and the White Ovals (WOS) located at ≈ 22 and ≈ 30 degrees south…

Evolution of a dark vortex on Neptune with transient secondary features

de Pater, Imke; Wong, Michael H.; Irwin, Patrick G. J. +8 more

Dark spots on Neptune observed by Voyager and the Hubble Space Telescope are thought to be anticyclones with lifetimes of a few years, in contrast with very long-lived anticyclones in Jupiter and Saturn. The full life cycle of any Neptune dark spot has not been captured due to limited temporal coverage, but our Hubble observations of a recent feat…

Titan's haze at opposite seasons from HST-STIS spectroscopy

Karkoschka, Erich

We present an analysis of three new image cubes of Titan by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph taken in 2017, 2018, and 2019, half a Titan year after previously analyzed image cubes. Both data sets probe periods when Titan's seasonal north-south-asymmetry switched. The new observations show that the new reversal came exactly half a Titan yea…