Dish on the Cosmos: King of The Radio Sky

摘要

Most people who own optical telescopes quickly turn to observing Jupiter since it's one of the brightest objects in the night sky. When I was young and received a long-begged-for telescope for my birthday, the first thing I pointed it at was Jupiter. Seeing the Galilean moons and the resolved disk of the planet was incredibly exciting. The light that we see from the planet comes from the upper clouds in Jupiter's atmosphere reflecting the Sun's light back to us. Jupiter is big, relatively nearby, and highly reflective leading to it being bright. In radio wavelengths, Jupiter also shines brightly, but the light it is emitting comes from its own internal heat and magnetic field rather than the reflected sunlight. Recent observations of Jupiter have used the radio emission from the planet to study an unfolding storm in great detail, giving a glimpse down into the depths of the planet.