Webb telescope discovers intense jet stream in Jupiter’s atmosphere

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https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/10/19/webb-telescope-discovers-intense-jet-stream-in-jupiters-atmosphere

By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News.

Excerpt: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a fast-moving jet stream in Jupiter’s atmosphere that is blowing twice as fast as the visible cloud layers below it, creating wind shears that far exceed anything seen on Earth. The high-speed jet stream, which is traveling at 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour) and is more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide, sits over Jupiter’s equator, 15 to 30 miles (25 to 50 kilometers) above the main cloud deck familiar from optical photos. ...winds in the visible cloud layer blow at about 180 mph (250 km/hour). This means that for every kilometer above these visible clouds, the wind speed increases by 7 to 10 kilometers per hour, according to Ricardo Hueso, lead author of a paper describing the findings published today in the journal Nature Astronomy....

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