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Jupiter

15 March 2013
Astronomy

NASA has a story about Jupiter – see www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-095&cid=release_2013-095

There is a lovely image of a swirling atmosphere, with cloudless patches dotted near the equator. The Cassini spacecraft has sent back hundreds of images of Jupiter and scientists have worked out the cloudless patches, or hot spots, are caused by Rossby waves, a pattern also seen in Earth's atmosphere and oceans. However, the cloudless patches are something of a misnomer, we learn, as they only go down so far – to a deeper and warmer layer of the atmosphere of Jupiter.

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