- 1Universidad del País Vasco / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea, Escuela de Ingenieria de Bilbao, Física Aplicada I, Bilbao, Spain (ricardo.hueso@ehu.es)
- 2University of California, Berkeley, USA
- 3LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France
- 4University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
- 5Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
- 6Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, USA
The James Webb Space Telescope observed the Jovian System during Cycle 1 through the Early Release Science program 1373 (de Pater et al. 2022). The NIRCAM instrument obtained high-spatial resolution observations of the Jovian atmosphere in July 2022 in 5 different filters in wavelengths from 1.6 to 4.1 microns, with observations in three filters repeated after one planetary rotation to asses winds and atmospheric dynamics. The combination of high sensitivity in the near infrared and spatial resolution provided images that reveal exciting new aspects of the Jovian atmosphere. Early results from those observations include the discovery of a fast and narrow equatorial jet in the upper hazes near the tropopause potentially related with Jupiter’s Equatorial Stratospheric Oscillation (Hueso et al. 2023), the wind field of the upper levels of the Great Red Spot (Harkett et al. 2024), and in exciting views of the polar hazes and auroras that may give us hints of their potential relations (Antuñano et al. 2024). Observations also show new features in the atmosphere, such as a detached limb brightening from fluorescent emissions similar to observations attained by the JIRAM instrument on Juno (Migliorini et al. 2023). The 405N image shows the deep troposphere combined in some areas with thermal emissions from the interior of the planet. We here review those images, discussing atmospheric dynamics retrieved from those observations through the planet at multiple altitudes beyond the equator and the polar areas and we present additional aspects revealed by these observations that, together with a few commissioning observations from program 1022, remain so far the unique NIRCAM observations of the Jupiter atmosphere.
References:
de Pater et al. JWST Observations of the Jovian System from Commissioning and ERS data . AAS Division of Planetary Science meeting #54, 2022. id. 306.07
Hueso et al. An intense narrow equatorial jet in Jupiter’s lower stratosphere observed by JWST, Nature Astronomy, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02099-2
Harkett et al. Thermal Structure and Composition of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot from JWST/MIRI, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024JE008415
Antuñano et al. JWST/NIRCAM views of Jupiter's polar regions, EPSC Meeting Europlanet Science Congress 2024, id. EPSC2024-808.
Migliorini et al. First Observations of CH4 and H3+ Spatially Resolved Emission Layers at Jupiter Equator, as Seen by JIRAM/Juno, Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1029/2022JE007509
How to cite: Hueso, R., Antunano, A., Sanchez-Lavega, A., Sanchez-Arregui, M., de Pater, I., Fouchet, T., Fletcher, L., Harkett, J., Orton, G., Rodríguez-Ovalle, P., Stansberry, J., and Wong, M.: The multiple layers of Jupiter’s troposphere observed by the NIRCAM instrument in the James Webb Space Telescope , EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-18631, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-18631, 2025.
