Structure of the Atmosphere of Jupiter: Galileo Probe Measurements
Temperatures and pressures measured by the Galileo probe during parachute descent into Jupiter's atmosphere essentially followed the dry adiabat between 0.41 and 24 bars, consistent with the absence of a deep water cloud and with the low water content found by the mass spectrometer. From 5 to 15 bars, lapse rates were slightly stable relative to the adiabat calculated for the observed H2/He ratio, which suggests that upward heat transport in that range is not attributable to simple radial convection. In the upper atmosphere, temperatures of >1000 kelvin at the 0.01-microbar level confirmed the hot exosphere that had been inferred from Voyager occultations. The thermal gradient increased sharply to 5 kelvin per kilometer at a reconstructed altitude of 350 kilometers, as was recently predicted. Densities at 1000 kilometers were 100 times those in the pre-encounter engineering model.
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A. Seiff, Department of Meteorology, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192, USA. D. B. Kirk, 37465 Riverside Drive, Pleasant Hill, OR 97455, USA. T. C. D. Knight, 2370 South Brentwood Street, Lakewood, CO 80227, USA. J. D. Mihalov, R. E. Young, F. S. Milos, J. Wang, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035, USA. R. C. Blanchard, NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA 23681, USA. G. Schubert, Department of Earth and Space Science, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA. U. von Zahn, Institut fur Atmospharenphysik, Universitat Rostock, D(0)-2565 Kuhlungsborn, Germany. G. Lehmacher, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
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