Unveiling Jupiter’s interior with Juno : A dry atmosphere, deep winds and perhaps a fuzzy core

Séminaire IPAG de Tristan Guillot (Lagrange, Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur), jeudi 29 mars 2018 à 11h00, salle Manuel Forestini IPAG

Juno has been in orbit around Jupiter since July 2016. Its goal is to probe the interior structure of the planet to understand its composition, dynamics, magnetic field and provide crucial constraints to understand the formation of the Solar System. The results obtained thus far are already a striking improvement for our knowledge of Jupiter. The deep atmosphere is found to be much more complex than anticipated. Its magnetic field shows strong variations related to anomalies yet to be explained. The gravity field measurements represent an improvement of more than 2 orders of magnitude over previous values. Preliminary interior models using these measurements point to the existence of perhaps a fuzzy core, but most importantly to an envelope which is not fully mixed. This has consequences for how we view the formation of the planet. Further examination of the gravity field enables for the first time the determination of the depth of the zonal flows in a giant planet, a long-time puzzle for atmospheric dynamics. This in turn has consequences for Saturn and giant exoplanets.