This sequence of colour-enhanced pictures shows Jupiter NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it swoops by the giant planet.

(NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Kevin M. Gill)

Jupiter is by far the most huge and enigmatic planet in our solar program. Its lots of moons, the iconic stormy red spot, and the mysterious swirls and stripes that retain switching up their colours have puzzled astronomers for centuries.

But now, it appears that astronomers have lastly decoded the latter’s secrets, thanks to NASA’s Juno Mission digging out extraordinary new information and facts on Jupiter’s magnetic field.

The chameleon-esque dark and light bands wrapped about the gas giant are basically cold, windy clouds of ammonia and water, zipping about in an atmosphere of hydrogen and helium.

Scientists had extended suspected that infrared (IR) variations about 50 km under the planet’s surface have been somehow linked to colour-altering belts on Jupiter. Nonetheless, the most recent analysis has shown that these hyperlinks go even deeper!

In actuality, these IR variations outcome from waves propagating from Jupiter’s deep interiors, made by its personal magnetic field. This has led scientists to think that the modifications in the planet’s magnetic field are causing these mysterious colour shifts.

“Just about every 4 or 5 years, issues adjust. The colours of the belts can adjust, and from time to time you see worldwide upheavals when the entire climate pattern goes slightly crazy for a bit, and it has been a mystery as to why that takes place,” says Professor Chris Jones, a member of the analysis group.

Employing the information collected by NASA’s Juno spacecraft, the study group monitored the modifications in Jupiter’s magnetic field more than seven extended years. Their calculations revealed that the period of infrared variations synced up with the wave-like motions or torsional oscillations made by the planet’s magnetic field.

More than the years, tracking these waves and oscillations in Jupiter’s magnetic field led researchers to the Wonderful Blue Spot — a precise spot on the gas giant’s magnetic field. The most recent information shows that this spot is moving eastwards and slowing its pace. Scientists think this is the transition point, the starting of the new oscillation.

From right here on, scientists count on the wave’s movements to slow down prior to reversing and switching to a westward path, heralding modifications in the IR radiations and, in turn, the planet’s coloured bands and stripes.

These findings have not only answered why Jupiter keeps altering its colours but also brought scientists closer to understanding Jupiter’s climate pattern, establishing a connecting hyperlink amongst the modifications in the planet’s climate, its surface and deep inside its interiors.

Nonetheless, inquiries about how these Jupiterian waves generate the observed infrared variations stay.

Although these answers would most most likely be discovered by unravelling the complicated dynamics and cloud or aerosol reactions in Jupiter’s climate, Dr Kumiko Hori, a co-author of the study, hopes that this analysis “opens a window to probe the hidden deep interior of Jupiter, just like seismology does for the Earth and helioseismology does for the Sun”.

This study was published in the journal Nature Astronomy and can be accessed right here.

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