For the first time, NASA must call for help from the public, in the exploration of Jupiter

NASA's Juno probe is the author of some of the best pictures of Jupiter in recent years. Recently. The space agency has established a citizen science project so that the public can help in the work to determine the atmospheric features of the gas giant.

The project, called Jovian Vortex Hunter and led by researchers at the University of Minnesota and NASA, aims to classify the different types of clouds on Jupiter. The researchers are interested in determining the underlying fluid dynamics that lead to the formation of vortices and chaotic structures on the planet and examining the images obtained by the Juno mission.

Jupiter is the largest gas giant planet in the Solar System

Jupiter mainly contains matter in the gaseous and liquid states. It is the largest gas giant in the Solar System with a diameter of 142,984 km at the equator. The planet's average density is 1.326 g/cm³, and is the most dense of the four gas giants.

"There are so many images that our small team will take several years to examine all of them," said postdoctoral researcher in physics and astronomy Ramanakumar Sankar, who led the Jovian Vortex Hunter project. .

"We need help from the public to determine which images have vortices, where they are, and how they appear. With a catalog of features (especially vortices), we can study them. The physics behind how these features form, and how they relate to the structure of the atmosphere, especially below clouds, where we can't observe them directly."

NASA needs your help to determine which images have swirls on Jupiter.

NASA's Juno satellite has been in Jupiter's atmosphere since 2016 on a mission to explore the planet. It's a spaceship about the length of a basketball court and orbiting Jupiter. Currently, this satellite and the James Webb telescope are important tools to help NASA provide detailed views of Jupiter for research.

The researchers hope to answer three key questions: Is there a difference in diversity between the cyclonic and anticylonic features, what are the different cloud structures possible, and the brown masses ( how is long cyclonic dark brown) different from other cyclone features?

On Jupiter, most clouds are made of chemicals other than water.

"Jupiter's atmosphere is very similar to ours: there are clouds of different shapes and sizes," explained the Jovian Vortex Hunter researchers: "On Jupiter, most of the clouds are made of chemical substances other than water, and can be several thousand kilometers in size.

"Some clouds are also created from strong storms that are more than 50 kilometers or even hundreds of kilometers in height. Figuring out how these clouds form is crucial to understanding the stellar atmospheres. Wood, and the processes that create the wonderful features we see."

Jovian refers to the type of cloud the team is primarily interested in studying.

"Different clouds on Jupiter form under different atmospheric conditions (e.g. hurricanes, tornadoes), similar to how we get different types of clouds when the atmosphere is calm or The types of clouds on Jupiter are also highly dependent on the chemicals that form them.Jupiter has three main cloud layers: ammonia clouds are mostly clouds that we can see because they form on the far side. on top, followed by a layer of ammonium hydrosulfide, and deep in the atmosphere (about 150 km below the ammonia clouds), likely thick water clouds".

"To understand how these different clouds form, we need to look at the variety of cloud features in the atmosphere. In this project, we'll catalog that and group the features. different cloud capabilities from JunoCam images together".

Jovian Vortex Hunter is classified as a citizen science project, which is a collaboration between scientists and interested members of the public.

Jupiter is the largest and heaviest planet in the Solar System. Its average radius is 69,911± 6 km, 10.97 times larger than Earth's. Jupiter's mass is 1,8986.1027 kg, or 317.8 times that of Earth. Even so, as a gas planet, it has a lighter matter density of about 1,326 g/cm3.

Besides, as a gas giant, Jupiter does not have a real surface. If someone stood on it, they would simply sink and go through the solid core of the planet. As a result, the gravitational force on Jupiter (defined at the top of the gas cloud) is about 24.79 m/s2, or 2,528 g.