Colourful swirling cloud belts dominate Jupiter’s southern hemisphere in this image captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft. Image credit: NASA
Scientists from Australia and the United States have helped to solve the mystery underlying Jupiter's coloured bands in a new study on the interaction between atmospheres and magnetic fields. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. Unlike Earth, Jupiter has no solid surface - it is a gaseous planet, consisting mostly of hydrogen and helium. Several strong jet streams flow west to east in Jupiter's atmosphere that are, in a way, similar to Earth's jet streams. Clouds of ammonia at Jupiter's outer atmosphere are carried along by these jet streams to form Jupiter's coloured bands, which are shades white, red, orange, brown and yellow. Dr Navid Constantinou from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, one of the researchers on the study, said that until recently little was known about what happened below Jupiter's clouds. "We know a lot about the jet streams in Earth's atmosphere and the key role they play in the weather and climate, but we still have a lot to learn about Jupiter's atmosphere," he said.
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