11.3 Atmospheres of the giant planets  (Page 2/27)

Clouds and atmospheric structure

The clouds of Jupiter ( [link] ) are among the most spectacular sights in the solar system, much beloved by makers of science-fiction films. They range in color from white to orange to red to brown, swirling and twisting in a constantly changing kaleidoscope of patterns. Saturn shows similar but much more subdued cloud activity; instead of vivid colors, its clouds have a nearly uniform butterscotch hue ( [link] ).

Jupiter’s colorful clouds.

Different gases freeze at different temperatures. At the temperatures and pressures of the upper atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn, methane remains a gas, but ammonia can condense and freeze. (Similarly, water vapor condenses high in Earth’s atmosphere to produce clouds of ice crystals.) The primary clouds that we see around these planets, whether from a spacecraft or through a telescope, are composed of frozen ammonia crystals. The ammonia clouds mark the upper edge of the planets’ tropospheres; above that is the stratosphere, the coldest part of the atmosphere. (These layers were initially defined in Earth as a Planet .)

Saturn over five years.

The diagrams in [link] show the structure and clouds in the atmospheres of all four jovian planets. On both Jupiter and Saturn, the temperature near the cloud tops is about 140 K (only a little cooler than the polar caps of Mars). On Jupiter, this cloud level is at a pressure of about 0.1 bar (one tenth the atmospheric pressure at the surface of Earth), but on Saturn it occurs lower in the atmosphere, at about 1 bar. Because the ammonia clouds lie so much deeper on Saturn, they are more difficult to see, and the overall appearance of the planet is much blander than is Jupiter’s appearance.

Atmospheric structure of the jovian planets.

Within the tropospheres of these planets, the temperature and pressure both increase with depth. Through breaks in the ammonia clouds, we can see tantalizing glimpses of other cloud layers that can form in these deeper regions of the atmosphere—regions that were sampled directly for Jupiter by the Galileo probe that fell into the planet.