Title
The Merger of Two Giant Anticyclones in the Atmosphere of Jupiter
Date Issued
01 January 2001
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Sanchez-Lavega A.
Orton G.S.
Morales R.
Lecacheux J.
Fisher B.
Fukumura-Sawada P.
Golisch W.
Griep D.
Kaminski C.
Baines K.
Rages K.
West R.
Institut de Mecanique Celeste
Publisher(s)
Academic Press Inc.
Abstract
Two giant ovals in Jupiter's southern atmosphere, vortices of counterclockwise-rotating winds, merged in a 3-week period, starting in March 2000. One of the ovals called FA was more than 60 years old; the other called BE was the product of two 60-year-old ovals (BC and DE) that merged in 1998 (A. Sanchez-Lavega et al. 1999, Icarus 142, 116-124). The merger took place when the ovals were southeast of the Great Red Spot and after the disappearance of a smaller, clockwise-rotating oval midway between them. The interaction began when the high-altitude oval clouds showed counter-clockwise rotation about each other, followed by coalescence and shrinking. The interaction in deeper clouds did not include mutual rotation, but there was evidence of complex cloud structure during the merger. © 2001 Academic Press.
Start page
491
End page
495
Volume
149
Issue
2
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Astronomía
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-0001653572
Source
Icarus
ISSN of the container
00191035
Sponsor(s)
The Spanish team was supported by Gobierno Vasco PI 034/97. The French team was supported by the Programme National de Planetologie. The U.S. team was supported by NASA through grants to the Institute for Astronomy (University of Hawaii) and JPL. Some of the observations were made by the NASA–ESA Hubble Space Telescope, with support provided through grant GO-8148 from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronmy under NASA contract NAS5-26555. We acknowledge the discretionary time provided by the HST director for the observations on 2 September (DD-8871). RM acknowledges a fellowship from Universidad Pais Vasco. WG, DG, PF-W, and CK are staff and GO and BF were visiting astronomers at the IRTF, which is operated by the Institute for Astronomy under contract to NASA. We thank J. A. Cano (GEA, Spain) for the image processing software LAIA.
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