NASA的朱诺航天器, which reached the planet Jupiter2016年7月after a five-year, 1.7-billion-mile (2.7-billion-kilometer) journey, is exploring our solar system's biggest planet. It's taking advantage of a polar orbit that allows it to swoop down within 3,100 miles (4,990 kilometers) of the immense world's cloud tops. Imagine it this way: If Jupiter were the size of a basketball, Juno would be only about a third of an inch away.
那是任何航天器最接近巨大的星球without smashing into it， 和it's a chance to take a more detailed look than ever before possible at an immense, faraway object. And as scientists analyze the initial data from the$1.13 billionmission, they're discovering that the gas giant appears to be significantly different than anyone would have imagined.
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“木星并不像我们想象的那样简单。”Southwest Research Institute (SWRI)谁是朱诺的主要研究员。他描述地球的结构，变异性和运动比科学家所设想的要多得多。“没有人期望木星有这么多复杂性，而且如此深刻。”
As thisSWRI新闻稿细节，Juno拥有八种科学仪器，旨在研究地球的磁场，气氛和内部结构，它们表明木星不仅仅是巨大的气体球。
"Until Juno's arrival, our understanding of Jupiter's atmosphere was based on what we can see from the side, near the equator," says Steven M. Levin, a Juno project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an email. "From that angle, Jupiter appears dynamic, but organized. Large belts and zones form a consistent pattern of jet streams which give the planet its familiar striped appearance. The new polar images from Juno look nothing like that. Around the poles, Jupiter looks chaotic, without an obvious, stable structure, and certainly without the regular stripes we see near the equator."
"We don't really know what this means yet," Levin says. "It could tell us something important about how Jupiter's atmosphere circulates, about how the great depth of Jupiter's atmosphere affects its weather patterns, or about how the heat escapes from Jupiter's interior. "
Juno's observations also show that at Jupiter's equator, the planet has a narrow, ammonia-rich plume, which resembles a bigger version of the air currents rising from Earth's equator to generate the贸易风.
Additionally, as thisNASA press releasedetails, Juno's observations reveal that Jupiter's magnetic field — already known to bethe most intense在太阳系中 - 甚至比以前估计的更强大，并且具有相对优势的块状区域。博尔顿说，数据，再加上对行星重力场的测量，与投影点不同，其内部的内部比任何人预期的都更为复杂和运动。
博尔顿说：“磁场在大气中的水平更高，但是重力场告诉我们，它在地球中间甚至更深，甚至比那更深。”
"Our first magnetic field results suggest a magnetic dynamo region which is closer to the surface of the planet than anyone predicted, and perhaps more complicated than expected as well," Levin explains. "The first gravity measurements suggest the possibility of deep winds, reaching thousands of kilometers into the planet, and/or a central core which is larger and less distinct than expected."
博尔顿和莱文都说，最初的数据已经表明科学家可能不仅要重新考虑他们以前的观念Jupiter，但关于其他天然气巨头的工作方式。他们期望更多的见解来自卫星收集的信息，因为它每53天就经过木星，这是博尔顿说可能持续三年的任务。
"Along with the microwave radiometer measurements, which have also shown surprises in the deep atmosphere, these results demonstrate that if we want to understand giant planets, we will need to study all of Jupiter," Levin says. "That means from the top of its atmosphere all the way to the core at its center, from the north pole to the south pole and everything in between, and across the longitudes all around the planet. That's Juno's mission, and we're off to a fascinating start."
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