New findings about Jupiter

 Jupiter and it's understanding of planet formation, New models offer clues

Jupiter’s atmosphere and clouds have mesmerized stargazers for centuries, as their multi-colored, swirling layers can easily be viewed from powerful telescopes on Earth. However, NASA’s Juno spacecraft has upped the ante regarding our understanding of Jupiter’s atmospheric features, having revealed them in breathtaking detail. This includes images of massive lightning storms, clouds swallowing clouds, polar vortices and powerful jet streams. Despite its beauty and wonder, scientists are still puzzled about the processes occurring deep inside Jupiter’s atmosphere which result in these incredible features. Jupiter now appears far wetter than long assumed, carrying more oxygen than the Sun itself. The finding reshapes how scientists think the largest planet came together and sharpens the rules used to explain how planets form anywhere. New simulations finally connect Jupiter’s cloud cover to the gases which seep upward from much deeper layers. 

At the University of Chicago (UChicago), Jeehyun Yang built a digital Jupiter which tracks both chemistry and motion. Her team also partnered with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists to capture how clouds and heat move together. By matching those deep processes to gases measured higher up, the model tightened the range for Jupiter’s oxygen. Now, a collaborative team of scientists from NASA and academia have provided new insights into the interior mechanisms of Jupiter’s atmosphere, with their findings being published. Through a series of computer models designed to simulate Jupiter’s interior mechanisms. Researchers used CO as a proxy tracer, an easier signal which stands in for another. Deep inside Jupiter, heat drives carbon and oxygen through reactions, and the balance controls how much CO survives. When vertical mixing lifts gas upward faster than chemistry can reset it, CO becomes a record of the deeper mix. The record only works if models get mixing speeds right, since faster churn can mimic different oxygen amounts.

After using a combination of a 1D chemistry-based model and a 2D hydrodynamic model, the team discovered that Jupiter contains about one and a half times more oxygen than the Sun. Additionally, the team found that the circulation patterns within Jupiter’s atmosphere are much slower than previously hypothesized. Discovering Jupiter’s higher-than-expected oxygen content could help scientists constrain planetary formation and evolution models, for both planets in our solar system, and beyond. “This is a long-standing debate in planetary studies,” said Dr. Jeehyun Yang, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago and lead author. “It’s a testament to how the latest generation of computational models can transform our understanding of other planets.” Work on disk snowlines, boundaries where key gases freeze into ice, outlined why carbon and oxygen separate. Beyond the water snowline, icy grains lock oxygen into solids, and planets can swallow the oxygen faster than vapor. If Jupiter gathered much of its mass where ices piled up, migration could later park it nearer the Sun. Similar element ratios now guide studies of exoplanets, since telescopes can compare water, methane, and CO together.

The Great Red Spot still spans about twice Earth’s width, but it only hints at deeper water. Water carries much of Jupiter’s oxygen, and it condenses into heavy clouds which trap it below the visible bands. NASA’s Galileo probe lasted about 58 minutes in 1995, and it avoided the wettest storms. One detailed report traced that dispute to the planet’s deep, unreachable hidden water. The amount of oxygen found in Jupiter’s atmosphere is almost negligible compared to the hydrogen and helium which largely comprises the largest planet in the solar system. However, these findings nonetheless profoundly change our understanding of Jupiter and its atmospheric composition and behavior. Along with helping scientists better understand how our own solar system formed and evolved, Jupiter is often used as an analog for gas giant exoplanets. Older studies treated chemistry and circulation separately, even though hydrodynamics, the physics of moving fluids, sets the pace. Rising gas cools and forms droplets, which changes which molecules react, and sinking gas reheats and reverses those changes. The team built the new model so cloud behavior and chemistry could constrain each other in the same run. Even with that coupling, the model still depends on laboratory reaction rates which remain uncertain under Jupiter-like pressures.

Since arriving at the Jovian system in 2016, Juno has profoundly changed our understanding of the largest planet in the solar system, along with providing breathtaking images. This includes discovering Jupiter’s poles exhibit several vortices, as opposed to a single large vortex on Saturn, along with discovering that Jupiter potentially lacks a solid rocky core, and instead has a “fuzzy” core comprised of heavy elements mixed with hydrogen. Microwave data pinned down water abundance in Jupiter’s equatorial air, and NASA’s Juno offered a rare check on deeper oxygen. Those waves pass through upper clouds, so the instrument sensed water vapor below, where sunlight cannot drive the chemistry. The new simulations landed near the lower end of that microwave range, easing tension between models and measurements. Jupiter’s water probably varies with latitude, so a single equatorial value cannot describe every storm system.

Additionally, Juno has obtained incredible images and gathered groundbreaking data regarding Jupiter’s four Galilean moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. This includes imaging extreme volcanic activity on Io, finding that Europa’s ice shell thickness is different across the surface, confirmed that Ganymede has its own magnetic field, and finding that Callisto has internal activity despite it being comprised largely of ice. The research group described vertical mixing with eddy diffusion, a shortcut for how turbulence moves gas upward and downward. Their results implied diffusion ran 35 to 40 times slower than standard assumptions used in many Jupiter models. At that pace, a molecule could take several weeks to cross one layer, rather than doing it in hours. “It really shows how much we still have to learn about planets, even in our own solar system,” said Yang. The study also tracked the carbon-to-oxygen ratio, the balance of carbon compared with oxygen in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Galileo’s measurements showed Jupiter held extra carbon, and the new oxygen estimate leaves that carbon looking even more dominant. Carbon-rich solids and ices can form where water freezes out, and later accretion can preserve that imbalance. If Jupiter grew in such a patchy disk, other planetary systems may also build giants from materials that vary by region.

Juno’s mission was extended through September 2025, with plans to continue spacecraft operations until it runs out of fuel or ceases function. This is when NASA plans to intentionally have Juno crash into Jupiter’s atmosphere to avoid contaminating the Galilean moons with Earth’s microbes. This similar “retirement” was used for NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in Jupiter and NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in Saturn in September 2003 and September 2017, respectively. Direct sampling remains the cleanest way to confirm Jupiter’s deep water, because clouds can fool remote sensing. A dedicated entry probe could measure water vapor as it falls, and that reading would pin down oxygen. Meanwhile, long observing runs from Earth can track CO across latitudes, testing whether mixing stays slow everywhere. Any single probe path could still miss unusual pockets, so scientists will need repeated descents to map the full picture. By tying cloud physics, chemistry and slow circulation into one framework, researchers narrowed Jupiter’s oxygen story to a workable range. Future water measurements and mixing tests will decide how widely that framework applies, from our solar system to distant giants. What new insights into Jupiter’s interior will scientists make in the coming years and decades? What can Jupiter's interior continue to teach scientists about planetary formation and evolution, and specifically exoplanets? How much more data will Juno gather before the end of its mission? Only time will tell.

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The 'Eye of Sauron'

 Extreme Closeup of  The 'Eye of Sauron' with JWST 

The Webb space telescope has stared deep into the darkness of the Helix Nebula, revealing layers of gas shed by a dying star to seed the cosmos with future generations of stars and planets. We know what will happen to the Sun and our Solar System because we can look outward into the galaxy and examine older Sun-like stars in their evolutionary end states. The new image offers a rare look at the fate of our own star and planetary system. Nothing lasts forever, including a star's fuel. Eventually, stars deplete their hydrogen and leave the main sequence behind. Stars with masses similar to the Sun will first swell and turn red, then shed their outer layers. That's what we see when we gaze at older Sun-like stars. But the fun doesn't end there. The once-great star then illuminates these gases and ionizes them, creating one of nature's most beautiful displays: a planetary nebula (PN). The Helix Nebula is beloved among amateur astronomers and astrophotographers because it looks like a giant eye, so much so that it's sometimes playfully called the 'Eye of Sauron.' The Helix Nebula is one of the closest bright PN to Earth. It's around 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius.

A new Webb image captures a zoomed-in view of the iconic nebula, also known as the Eye of Sauron or Eye of God for its piercing, eye-shaped appearance. At its center is a blazing white dwarf, the leftover core of a dying star, releasing an avalanche of material which crashes into a colder surrounding shell of gas and dust. The image provides a glimpse into the future of stars like the Sun once they’ve reached the end of their life cycle, recycling material of their own to birth new planetary systems. Readers will know it from the Hubble's well-known portrait of the stunning nebula. A volunteer team of astronomers called the Hubble Helix Team organized a nine-orbit campaign to capture the iconic image. But as we know, there's a new sheriff in town: the James Webb Space Telescope. We waited with great anticipation for the JWST to finally come to fruition. Not only because of the cosmic knowledge it's delivering, but because we love pictures of beautiful stellar objects. While the Hubble's image of the Helix Nebula will always have a place in our star-gazing hearts, the JWST has drawn us even deeper into one of our favourite planetary nebulae.

Using Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), the small portion of the Helix Nebula comes into full view to reveal comet-like knots, blazing stellar winds, and layers of gas. The high-resolution image shows cloudy pillars which resemble flames surrounding the inner region of an expanding shell of gas. Winds of fast-moving, hot gas from the dying star crash into slower, colder shells of gas and dust shed by the star at an earlier point in its life, creating the nebula’s unique shape. The white dwarf, out of the frame of Webb’s zoomed-in image, lies at the heart of the nebula. Radiation from the dying star lights up the surrounding gas, creating layers of material like a cosmic lasagna. Closest to the white dwarf is hot ionized gas, with cooler molecular hydrogen farther out and protective pockets within dust clouds where more complex molecules can start to form. This is the raw material which could eventually mold itself into planets and star systems. In the Webb image, the temperature and chemistry of the material are represented by different colors. The blue hue marks the hottest gas in this field, energized by intense ultraviolet light from the white dwarf. Farther out, the gas cools into the yellow regions where hydrogen atoms join into molecules. 

At the nebula’s outer edges, reddish tones mark the coolest material, where thinning gas gives way to dust formation, according to NASA. Powerful stellar wind and radiation from the dying star are blowing away the surrounding gas from the star's expelled outer layers. But there are denser knots of material among the gas, and they're resisting the onslaught. They're sometimes called globules, and even cometary knots, because they look like comets leaving dust and vapour trails as they travel through space. We can only see them in the closest PNe, but astronomers think they're a common feature. The Helix Nebula features around 40,000 cometary knots. The amazing thing is, each one probably covers more space than our Solar System, when measured out to Pluto's orbit. And these systems are nowhere near as massive. The head of each knot is well-illuminated and ionized by the nebula's star, while a tail of less well-energized gas trails behind. Zoomed-in image highlights cometary knots in the Helix Nebula. 

The nebula was first spotted in the 1800s and has since become one of the most iconic features of our night skies for its striking shape and proximity. Located just 650 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Aquarius, the eye-shaped nebula is one of the closest of all bright planetary nebulae to our planet’s view. In astronomical terms, planetary nebulae like the Helix Nebula don't last long. It's about 10,000 to 12,000 years old, which is kind of old for a planetary nebula. Its progenitor star started shedding its outer layers between about 15,000 and 20,000 years ago. For the next 10,000, maybe 20,000 years, Helix will continue to expand. Its gas will thin out, and as the white dwarf cools, less radiation will light the gases up. It will grow dimmer and fainter, and will cease to be. Somewhere around 50,000 years after its formation, it will be dispersed into and become part of the interstellar medium. 

This is our Sun's final fate. As it nears the end of its life on the main sequence, it will expand into a red giant. The once-yellow Sun, which will have turned a glowering red, will not be able to maintain its gravitational hold on its gaseous outer layers. They'll be shed into space, then lit up by the long-lived remnant of the Sun, a white dwarf. The white dwarf will be a fading stellar cinder, emanating only remnant heat for billions of years. The nebula and its colours represent a dying star's final gasp, a stellar exhalation which spreads star-stuff out into the cosmos. The material could be taken up in the next round of star formation. Some of this material may even become part of a planet or planets in the future. Maybe one of them will be rocky, with liquid water. Perhaps sometime in the future, some of this water will sit in a warm little pond on the surface of this new world. Astronomers have used ground-based and space observatories to stare into the Eye of Sauron, observing the final moments of a dying star in great detail for everyone.

Muhammad (Peace be upon him) Names