Jupiter

Since we were children we have been told that Jupiter is enormous, colossal, exaggeratedly large. Turns out not so much.

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There are things that we learn in childhood that accompany us throughout our lives and one of them is to recite the Solar System at once, which has its disadvantages: for those of us who are already old, mentioning Pluto (which It is no longer a planet) either make mistakes when estimating distances interplanetary. Another classic misconception is the size of Jupiter. Data from the Juno mission published in Nature Astronomy They change the shape and size of the colossus of the Solar System. Jupiter is flatter and smaller than we thought. We knew that Jupiter was the largest planet in the Solar System, a gaseous colossus whose mass exceeded that of the rest of the planets combined, which gave it the power to be almost the conductor of the orchestra (with the permission of the Sun) as long as its gravity had a lot of weight. Its large magnetic shield protects its moons from solar radiation, it has iconic clouds and storms in astronomy and its Great Red Spot It exceeds the Earth in size. But there is something wrong with its shape and size. The Context. The missions Voyager and Pioneerdating back to the 1970s, established figures that today we read in science books: that Jupiter has an equatorial radius of 71,492 kilometers and a polar radius of 66,854 kilometers. With this model, the planet was assimilated as a sphere flattened at the poles (oblate spheroid). These dimensions were calculated with just six indirect measurements with profiles of radio occultation. The discovery. Because what Juno has seen shows that the equatorial radius is approximately 8 kilometers smaller and the polar radius is about 24 kilometers smaller than previous missions said. Qualitatively, Jupiter is flatter. The first thing that comes to mind is: How important are eight kilometers on a planet 140,000 kilometers wide? Well scientifically, it has it. In fact, it’s the difference between whether the laws of physics fit or not. Why is it important. Well, because although the difference is comparatively minor, the fact that it is smaller and has a flatter shape has thermodynamic implications. Thus, it suggests a colder atmosphere enriched with heavy elements that better suit what the Galileo probe measured in 1995. Additionally, having accurate geometry is essential to understanding what’s inside and interpreting the gravity data provided by Juno, so we can accurately map how its mass is distributed inside and how hydrogen behaves under extreme pressures. On the other hand, knowing Jupiter better is getting closer to the recipe of how the Earth was formed and going beyond: facilitating the understanding of thousands of other exoplanets giants that we are discovering in the stars. Radio occultation operation diagram. MPRennie Wikipedia Juno’s look. Both Pioneer and Voyager and Juno use radio occultation, that is, they use the same physical principle. The radio occultation technique consists of measuring how a planet’s atmosphere bends and slows down the radio signals of a probe when it is hidden behind it. By analyzing the delay and deviation of these waves from the Earth, the scientific team can precisely calculate the density and pressure and therefore the exact shape of the planet. Of course, from a technological point of view there has been half a century of evolution and it is noticeable in terms of quality due to its multiband operation, precision and repetition. Thus, the probes of the 70s mainly used one radio band while Juno uses two, which allows, among other things, to eliminate noise. Likewise, the original ones were passing missions in front of the planned June orbit, that is, we have gone from having six points to an almost complete map. And finally, ground-based tracking systems are night and day when it comes to measuring changes in frequency and signal arrival time. In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury In Xataka | We knew that there was water on Mars, but not how much. It turns out that 3.37 billion years ago an ocean covered half the planet Cover | NASA Hubble Space Telescope

The James Webb captures a lonely object of the size of Jupiter devouring like a miniature sun

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An international astronomer team has witnessed an extraordinary event: a lonely object, with a mass of just 5 to 10 times that of Jupiter, has entered a violent and prolonged growth burst. Using the combined power of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and him Vary Large Telescope (VLT) of the Southern European Observatory, scientists They have observed How this object, known as Cha J11070768-7626326, drastically increases its brightness and its “food” rhythm, behaving like a miniature star. The importance. This discovery represents the first time that a outbreak of accretion of type “exor”, a phenomenon so far associated with young stars, in a body of planetary mass. The finding is not only a milestone in astronomical observation, but also further blur the borders between what we consider a giant planet and a small star. The mystery. CH 1107-7626 is not a planet in the traditional sense that we all have in our mind. Although it has a mass comparable to that of a gaseous giant, I do not orbit any star and is 620 light years from the earth. Is what is known as an “free planetary mass object” or FFPMO (for its acronym in English). The existence of these lonely bodies raises a fundamental question for astronomy: are giant planets that were expelled from their solar systems, or are smaller stars that can exist in isolation? In order to solve this enigma that astronomers have right now on the table, you have to analyze the gas and dust disc that is around, as well as the way of accumulating the material. The fact that Cha 1107-7626 has an album and feeds on it suggests that its origin is more like that of a star. A cosmic feast. Astronomers observed Cha 1107-7626 in a state of calm in April and May 2025. However, for June, something had changed drastically. The object entered a “indulgence.” This means that its rhythm of ‘food’ began to increase, and in this way it reached a mass increase rate of 10-7 masses of Jupiter per year, the highest ever measured in a planetary mass object. As a result of this frenzy, the objective became between 1.5 and 2 brighter magnitudes in visible light and its optical flow increased between 3 and 6 times. This outbreak remained active for at least two months, since it was still on the end of the observation campaign in August 2026. But the most interesting thing is the speed it has. According to the observations made with the Vray Lark Telescope of the European Observatory, the growth rate is really aggressive, with a record rate of devouring 6,600 million tons per second of dust and gas. Great footprints. Beyond the increase in brightness, the telescopes captured detailed physical changes that reveal the nature of the event. A hydrogen emission line, known as Hα, developed a “double peak” profile with a red displaced absorption. According to the authors, this profile is a “distinctive brand” of the accretion channeled through magnetic fields, a process called “magnetospherical accretion” observed in young stars. But the most surprising finding was the change in the chemistry of the disc. At first, changes in the emission lines of the hydrocarbons molecules that came from the disc during the outbreak were seen. But water vapor also began to appear with a characteristic emission around 6.6 µm. This appeared during the outbreak where there was nothing before and is relevant because it is the first time that chemical changes of this type are observed caused by an increase in accretion. Relevance. This event classifies Cha 1107-7626 as the first “exor” of known planetary mass. Exor outbursts are significant accretion events that are considered key episodes in the early evolution of the stars. They can deeply affect the physical structure and chemical composition of the protoplanetary disk, potentially influencing the early stages of planet formation. Observing this process in such a small object demonstrates that the violent and fundamental mechanisms that the stars build also work at planetary scales. The study of Cha 1107-7626 offers an unprecedented vision of the accretion in the lower mass objects of the universe, providing a new window to understand how both smaller stars and the largest planets are formed. Images | Javier Miranda In Xataka | The most transformer of modern cosmology is just around the corner, according to the hypothesis of these physicists

NASA lost the best camera in Jupiter. A suicide plan has served to recover it successfully

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It seemed the premature end of the mission. The Junocam, the camera that has given us the most spectacular images of Jupiter and his moons, was dying. The relentless radiation of the gaseous giant had degraded the sweat sensor Juno turning his photos into a noise knead and corrupt lines. We had to try. With an overfruit of the moon ío just around the corner, the NASA team played the whole for the whole with a risky maneuver: cook the camera slowly at 600 million kilometers away to try to repair it. Although all at the control center endured breathing, the play worked. And not only that, but the miraculous rescue has sat a precedent for future space missions. Jupiter’s best photographer. Trying it was worth it because Junocam is not any camera. Is responsible for those Jupiter images that seem impressionist paintings and that, curiously, they are prosecuted by a community of fans on Earth. But its location is priced: it is out of titanium “bunker” that protects the main electronics of the Juno probe. NASA engineers knew that their useful life would be limited in one of the most radioactive environments of the solar system. The Calvary of the Junocam. The juno probe, that arrived in Jupiter in July 2016was designed to last until 2018, but its success has led NASA to extend the mission several times. During the first 34 orbits, Junocam worked perfectly. From orbit 47, radiation ravages began to be evident. For orbit 56, in November 2023, the situation was critical. “Almost all the images were corrupt,” admits NASA In a statement. The planet Jupiter and the moon ío photographed by Juno before and after repair A repair to all or nothing. Diagnosing the failure of a component at millions of kilometers is a titanic task. Repairing is a miracle. The clues pointed to a damaged voltage regulator at the camera power supply. With few options, the team resorted to a process called annealing or Annealing. The idea was, in essence, to heat the material and then cool it slowly, with the hope that heat would repair microscopic defects at the atomic level. “The annealing can sometimes alter a material such as silicon at the microscopic level, but we did not know if this would solve the damage,” explains Jacob Shaffner, chamber engineer. Forged on fire. NASA sent a command to Juno so that the only heater in the Junocam raised its temperature at about 25 ° C, much more than usual. The result was a success … temporary. The camera sent sharp images for several orbits. But Jupiter does not forgive. As the probe entered the radiation belts, the damage returned more strongly. “After orbit 55, our images were full of stripes and noise,” says Michael Ravine, head of the instrument. With an upcoming one Near Iro of íoonly one option was left. The only thing they had not tried was to take Junocam heater to the fullest and see if a more extreme recovery would save us. The reward. The first week there were no improvements. The tension in the equipment was maximum. But just a few days after the encounter with ío, the images began to improve dramatically. By the time Juno went to just 1,500 kilometers of the most volcanic moon in the solar system, the camera worked almost as well as the day of its launch. The success of the maneuver allowed Juno to capture very unprecedented and unprecedented images of the northern pole. The images revealed mountains covered with sulfur dioxide frost and Lava rivers that allowed scientists to rebuild geological formations as fascinating as A lava lake with a glass mountain Inside. This achievement is the culmination of an extended mission that has led Juno to explore Jupiter’s great moons. First it was Ganímedes in 2021the largest satellite of the solar system, and then Europe in 2022. I was as follows on the list, and losing the main camera would have been a hard blow. The repair, of course, is not eternal. NASA informs that noise has begun to reappear in orbit 74. But the lesson learned is incalculable. Images | NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSS In Xataka | The NASA Juno probe sends six photos of its passage through ío, the most inhospitable moon of the solar system

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