UC Berkeley Team Probes Violent Storms and Lightning on Jupiter

Astronomer Michael Wong, along with a team of researchers combined data from the Juno spacecraft, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the Gemini Observatory to reveal a special cloud structure near a massive cluster of lightning flashes: a three-way combination of deep clouds made of water, large convective towers — essentially Jovian cumulonimbus — and clear regions with downwelling of drier air outside the convective towers.

The research team includes Imke de Pater, a Berkeley professor of astronomy, Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Andrew Stephens at Gemini Observatory. Together, they combine multiwavelength observations from Hubble and Gemini with close-up views from Juno’s orbit to gain new insights into turbulent weather on the largest planet in our solar system.