What kind of gases are on jupiter

The surface of the planet, or the bottom of the atmosphere, is the point where scientists have calculated that the atmospheric pressure is equal to one bar, the same as found at the surface of Earth. The layer resting on the "surface" of Jupiter is known as the troposphere, and extends to approximately 31 miles 50 kilometers above the surface.

The troposphere contains ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide and water, which form the distinctive red and white bands seen from Earth. The colder white bands are known as zones, while the darker red ones are called belts. Gases within the zones rise, while within the belts they fall. Winds generally keep the two regions separate, but sometimes the icy white clouds will overlay the red bands, causing them to disappear for a period of time. Scientists have only observed the southern band periodically vanishing; the northern band remains perversely stable.

The troposphere also contains dense clouds of water that influence the atmospheric dynamics. As you move higher in the troposphere, the temperature drops, ranging from minus Fahrenheit minus Celsius to minus F minus C.

The next layer, the stratosphere, extends to almost miles km above the surface, containing hazes of hydrocarbons. Here, temperatures start at minus F and rise to approximately minus F minus C the higher you go. The stratosphere, like the troposphere, is warmed by the sun and the planet's interior. The stratosphere ends where the pressure is one one-thousandth that found at the surface of Earth. The thermosphere lies on top of the stratosphere. The rest of Jupiter includes water, ammonia and methane — compounds that arise when you mix oxygen, nitrogen and carbon in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere.

Deeper inside the planet, these chemicals can change form with increasing pressure and temperature. At its center, Jupiter may even have a rocky core. But it was able to measure other chemicals, finding that all gases — except for hydrogen, helium and argon — were two to four times more abundant than on the Sun.

We have many ideas as to how it acquired these elements, and it turns out that they all predict different amounts of water on the planet. But as you go deeper inside, the increasing pressure causes the gas to behave in strange ways.

As a result, only a thin, outer layer is what we would recognize as an atmosphere. Case in point: the Great Red Spot. View the Great Red Spot Section. As far as we know, Jupiter is not a place suitable for life. Any Jovian life would have to be quite different from any organism on Earth. Since Jupiter has no solid surface, Jovian aliens would have to float or fly, surviving in extreme conditions too harsh for any Earthling.

The temperatures are warm enough and flashes of lightning could provide energy that drives the chemical reactions needed for life. But staying at such a favorable depth would be a problem for a microbe or any other simple organism. Or the winds could lift them higher, where they would not only freeze but would be killed by radiation from space.

What happened? It's a stormy mass of raging gas and metallic hydrogen. The planet Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system.

It has a diameter 11 times that of the Earth and a mass more than times that of the Earth which is greater than twice the sum of all the other planets. Nevertheless its mass is less than one thousandth that of the Sun.

It orbits the Sun at a distance of about million miles million km in just under 12 years. The structure of Jupiter is very unlike that of the Earth. The visible 'surface' of Jupiter is, in fact, the uppermost layers of clouds of methane and ammonia. The interior of Jupiter is still something of a mystery, which NASA's current Juno mission hopes to shed more light on.

Some scientists think that it's likely to be made up of a solid core of material similar to that of the Earth. Otherwise, it would not have been able to collect all of its hydrogen and helium from the protosolar nebula — at least in theory. However, it is possible that this core has since shrunk due to convection currents of hot, liquid, metallic hydrogen mixing with the molten core. This core may even be absent now, but a detailed analysis is needed before this can be confirmed.

The Juno mission , which launched in August see below , is expected to provide some insight into these questions, and thereby make progress on the problem of the core. Our current theories regarding the formation of the Solar System claim that the planets formed about 4.

Nebular Hypothesis. Consistent with this theory, Jupiter is believed to have formed as a result of gravity pulling swirling clouds of gas and dust together. Jupiter acquired most of its mass from material left over from the formation of the Sun, and ended up with more than twice the combined mass of the other planets.

In fact, it has been conjectured that it Jupiter had accumulated more mass, it would have become a second star.

This is based on the fact that its composition is similar to that of the Sun — being made predominantly of hydrogen. In addition, current models of Solar System formation also indicate that Jupiter formed farther out from its current position. In what is known as the Grand Tack Hypothesis , Jupiter migrated towards the Sun and settled into its current position by roughly 4 billion years ago. This migration, it has been argued , could have resulted in the destruction of the earlier planets in our Solar System — which may have included Super-Earths closer to the Sun.

While it was not the first robotic spacecraft to visit Jupiter, or the first to study it from orbit this was done by the Galileo probe between and , the Juno mission was designed to investigate the deeper mysteries of the Jovian giant. The mission launched in August and achieved orbit around Jupiter on July 4th, The probe entered its polar elliptical orbit after completing a minute-long firing of the main engine, known as Jupiter Orbital Insertion or JOI.

As the probe approached Jupiter from above its north pole, it was afforded a view of the Jovian system, which it took a final picture of before commencing JOI.