What Are Spiky Storms and Why Do They Exclusively Exist on Jupiter?

You’ve never seen Jupiter like this.

Transcript

00:00You've no doubt seen images of Jupiter before, maybe even a flyover by the Juno spacecraft,

00:09but you've never seen it like this. This is the new 3D rendering of the clouds of our solar

00:14system's largest planet. It was captured by JunoCam with the spacecraft's visible light

00:19spectrum camera. The camera is capable of assessing relative height, allowing experts to take that

00:24information and place it into a 3D rendering program, providing us with a never-before-seen

00:28look at Jupiter's cloud formations. You can see pointy peaks and deep valleys, showing the swirls

00:33of Jupiter's ever-spinning storms, looking more like roses than tempestuous cyclones. According

00:38to Dr. Gerald Eichstadt, theoretical models tell us these clouds are made of ammonia, ammonium

00:43hydrosulfide, and water ice, from ammonia at the top to ice at the bottom. With Dr. Eichstadt

00:48explaining, once we calibrate our data thanks to other measurements of the same cloud tops,

00:53we will test and refine the theoretical predictions and have a better 3D picture of the chemical

00:58composition.