Jupiter's magnetic field

Jupiter’s magnetic field Today’s Video of the Day from Caltech shows Jupiter’s magnetic field based on observations by the Juno spacecraft.

Details and images obtained by the Juno mission are providing scientists with new insight into how planets form and behave.

David Stevenson is a professor of Planetary Science at Caltech. He explained that the magnetic and gravity data have been “invaluable but also confounding.”

“Although there are puzzles yet to be explained, this is already clarifying some of our ideas about how planets form, how they make magnetic fields and how the winds blow.”
Stevenson presented an update of both the Juno and the Cassini missions at the 2019 American Physical Society March Meeting in Boston. Jupiter has such a strong magnetic field because of the thick layer of metallic hydrogen that surrounds its core. It acts as a reservoir of charge particles that generate the magnetic field.

Jupiter has the strongest magnetic field of any of the planets in the solar system. Like the field that shelters Earth, it’s essentially dipolar, which means it has a north pole and a south pole, like the field created by a bar magnetic.

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By Chrissy Sexton, Earth.com Staff Writer

Video Credit: Caltech