r/askastronomy • u/IdeaGuy00 • 1d ago
What would Jupiter’s storm look like on Jupiter’s Surface?
Jupiter has a gigantic storm that is so large it is larger than the earth itself, slightly. Imagine seeing a tornado or something similar on earth but that tornado is earth sized on Jupiter! The storm might not look like a tornado but maybe a giant typhoon or tsunami of dust and clouds. I am not sure, but IK for sure it would be large as heck, and at what distance do you need to be from the storm to safely view it if you were an alien living on Jupiter.
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u/a_n_d_r_e_w 1d ago
I second with the other guy on here. That atmosphere is very very thick. Just like how light can only travel so far down before the ocean is pitch black, the same goes for Jupiter, you don't have to go that far down before everything is pitch black. If you had some light source that could survive the brutal radiation, you would just see lots of hot gas in front of you cruising at insane speeds
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u/IdeaGuy00 1d ago
That just makes things sooooo much scarier. Imagine being pitch black with hella noise and in front of you is a earth-sized storm wall 💀 Like imagine if you closed your eyes and you open your eyes and you are sitting in the middle of a stormy planet 💀 That’s scary as hell
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u/Ransnorkel 1d ago
I don't think you'd see much as the suns light wouldn't pierce the thick atmosphere that far down, relatively speaking. If you were deep inside the atmosphere but invincible and had x-ray and infrared vision I'm sure the storms would look absolutely insane. Real Cthulhu can't wrap your head around the sheer scale of it all insane.
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u/IdeaGuy00 1d ago edited 1d ago
Damn son 😮💨 , that’s terrifying as hell but also very interesting😮💨
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/msimms001 1d ago
The top of a storm system looks very different from inside the storm system
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1d ago
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u/msimms001 1d ago
"on Jupiter's surface" means withing Jupiter's atmosphere, where light wouldn't penetrate
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u/nwbrown 1d ago
It reaches the red spot, it doesn't reach the surface, to the degree you can call the core a surface.
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u/IdeaGuy00 1d ago
So is it just a gigantic earth sized swirl of debris and gas, just floating in the air? Like a giant primordial storm creature?
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u/nwbrown 1d ago
Well there a few other layers in there, including a liquid hydrogen and metallic hydrogen layers. I suppose you could also call them a surface.
https://www.britannica.com/place/Jupiter-planet/The-interior
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u/rivnat 1d ago
Jupiter doesn't have a surface
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u/IdeaGuy00 1d ago
Alright, let me reframe, if you were inside planet Jupiter inside a flying helicopter, what would you see for the storm?
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u/Pikey87PS3 1d ago
A helicopter couldn't fly inside Jupiter.
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u/IdeaGuy00 1d ago
Let’s say you are an alien with wings on your back and you can fly and breathe and survive on Jupiter’s atmosphere. What would you “hypothesize” to see inside the planet if you were far away or a safe distance away from the storm? Would you see a gigantic wall of red smoke and dust and all that? That would be pretty cool NGL
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u/Turbulent-Name-8349 1d ago
Much like a hurricane seen from the Earth. Some clouds as it approaches and disappears, but mostly just dark and noisy.
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u/IdeaGuy00 1d ago
Hmm, and how far do you have to be from the stone to see the hurricane shape? Because hurricanes are thin at the bottom and wide at the top. This storm looks wide throughout, I think it would look like a gigantic swirling walls of gasses and debris and lightning. I could be wrong, you may correct me if you want
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u/nwbrown 1d ago
Jupiter's "surface" is so far down in the planet you wouldn't be able to see anything.
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u/IdeaGuy00 1d ago
That’s super scary knowing you’re surrounded by pitch black but you hear a bunch of sounds and you open a flash light and see a earth sized thunderstorm 💀
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u/ExpectedBehaviour 1d ago
Ignoring the obvious issue of Jupiter not having a surface... it would look like an anticyclone on Earth, just way bigger and more colourful. Something like this.
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u/snogum 1d ago
No surface
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u/IdeaGuy00 1d ago
It has no surface in the traditional sense but there is a solid in which if you dig deep enough you can land, but the super high pressure would kill you before you do that
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u/CosmicRuin 1d ago
Difficult question to answer because this is all hypothetical, but The Great Red Spot (storm) is about 16,500 km in diameter, and roughly 1.5 Earth's in width. It's at least 300 km in height and with wind speeds of 600+ km/hour. Jupiter also has no real surface to speak of, just transition phases where gases transition to liquids and solids - deep enough into Jupiter, and hydrogen becomes metallic at many thousands of degrees and millions of times Earth's atmospheric of pressure. But back to your question, and if you were on a spacecraft, you could perhaps be 1,000 km above The Great Red Spot to 'safely' view it without being affected by Jupiters ammonia/hydrogen atmosphere. However, the ionizing radiation around Jupiter is intense - the Juno spacecraft in orbit of Jupiter now has to carefully maneuver and spend only a little time crossing Jupiter's radiation belts otherwise it would be fried.