Jupiter’s clouds are not made of ammonia ice
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Astronomers have long thought that the upper clouds of Jupiter, which create the planet’s iconic pale brown belts, are made of frozen ammonia. But a new study, that brought together amateur and professional astronomers, has shown that these clouds are actually located lower in the atmosphere than we thought and are made of something completely different: most likely ammonium hydrosulphide mixed with smog.
Citizen scientist Steve Hill previously showed that he could map the planet’s atmosphere by using only specially coloured filters and his backyard telescope. These results provided initial clues that the clouds were too deep within Jupiter’s warm atmosphere to be consistent with clouds made of ammonia ice. To check, Hill joined forces with Patrick Irwin at Oxford University, whose team had previously used the sophisticated MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to study the atmosphere of gas giants.
MUSE is capable of scanning the atmosphere of Jupiter at different wavelengths, mapping out the different molecules that make up the planet’s atmosphere. This animated image, based on real MUSE data, shows how the gas giant looks at different wavelengths.
