Title
The south equatorial belt of Jupiter, II: The onset and development of the 1993 disturbance
Date Issued
01 January 1996
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Bureau des Longitudes
Publisher(s)
Academic Press Inc.
Abstract
On April 6, 1993 an SEB disturbance commenced with a bright white spot at 15.5°S latitude. The spot was followed by a dark column lying only 24° from the eastern edge of the Great Red Spot. A continuous CCD and photographic survey at visual wavelengths of the event during the four months following the eruption has allowed us to obtain the best imaging records of the evolution of an SEB disturbance, with a spatial resolution and temporal coverage of unprecedent quality. A high resolution zonal wind velocity profile in the 8°S to 25°S latitude range has been obtained tracking the cloud elements pertaining to the SEBD and nearby features. The SEBD central and northern branches developed according to the classical morphology patterns and values of the zonal winds as described in paper I. However, this SEBD event was marked by the unusual proximity of the onset site to the GRS and by the interaction of the SEBD spots with preexisting features in the STrZ. The new phenomena observed included: (i) A temporal delay in the development of the SEBD southern branch spots, that moved with lower velocities (at about 30 m sec-1) than those observed on the average in other events; (ii) The interaction of a preexisting STrZ disturbance with the GRS and the SEBD southern branch features; (iii) The interaction of the features of the central branch with a long-lived anticyclonic vortex in the STrZ. The revival of the SEB was complete in November 1993, entering the belt during 1994 in an SEBD1 phase (as described in paper I) which was characterized at continuum wavelengths by the formation of a STrZ belt at ∼23.5°S and by the presence of synoptic and rapidly changing white spots at 11.5°S. This activity formed tilted cloud patterns of turbulence in the northern half of the belt in a region that corresponds to the cyclonic southern half of the strong eastward jetstream at ∼7°S. © 1996 Academic Press, Inc.
Start page
18
End page
29
Volume
121
Issue
1
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Astronomía
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-16144366237
Source
Icarus
ISSN of the container
00191035
Sponsor(s)
We are very grateful to J. A. Cano for developing the software package for planetary reductions within the image processing astronomy program LAIA. We are also very grateful to the members of the spanish ‘‘Grup d’Estudis Astronomics’’ (GEA, Spain) for their CCD imaging, and in particular to J. Juan, J. Nomen, J. Vidal, and S. Sanchez together with the team at Costitx Observatory in Mallorca. This work was supported in part by the Universidad Pais Vasco (Proyecto UPV EA50/95) and by the French National program in planetology.
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus