World Encyclopedia ::: Subscribe !

Natalie Clifford Barney

2009-08-26T02:59:00.000-07:00

Natalie Clifford Barney (31 October 1876 – 2 February 1972) was an American author and poet, who lived as an expatriate in Paris.

Barney's salon was held at her home on Paris's Left Bank for more than 60 years and brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation. She worked to promote writing by women and formed a "Women's Academy" in response to the all-male French Academy while also giving support and inspiration to male writers from Remy de Gourmont to Truman Capote.

She was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of getting rid of nuisances". In her writings she supported feminism, paganism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and dancer Armen Ohanian and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels, ranging from the salacious French bestseller Sapphic Idyll to The Well of Loneliness, arguably the most famous lesbian novel of the 20th century.

Early life

Natalie Barney was born in 1876 in Dayton, Ohio, to Albert Clifford Barney and Alice Pike Barney. Her father was the son of a wealthy manufacturer of railway cars and of English descent, and her mother was of French, Dutch and German ancestry. When she was six years old her family spent the summer at New York's Long Beach Hotel where Oscar Wilde happened to be speaking on his American lecture tour. Wilde scooped her up as she ran past him fleeing a group of small boys, held her out of their reach then sat her down on his knee and told her a story. The next day he joined Barney and her mother on the beach, where their conversation changed the course of Alice's life, inspiring her to pursue art seriously, despite her husband's disapproval. She later studied under Carolus-Duran and James McNeill Whistler. Many of her paintings are now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Like many girls of her time, Natalie Barney had a haphazard education. Her interest in the French language began with a governess who read Jules Verne stories aloud to her so she would have to learn quickly to understand them. Later she and her younger sister Laura Clifford Barney attended Les Ruches, a French boarding school founded by feminist Marie Souvestre and attended by such notables as Eleanor Roosevelt. As an adult she spoke French fluently without an accent and made her home in Paris. Nearly all her published works were written in French.

When she was ten her family moved from Ohio to Washington, D.C., spending summers in Bar Harbor, Maine. As the rebellious and unconventional daughter of one of the wealthiest families in town, she was often mentioned in Washington newspapers. In her early twenties she made headlines by galloping through Bar Harbor while driving a second horse on a lead ahead of her and by riding astride instead of sidesaddle.

Barney later said she knew by age 12 she was lesbian and was determined to "live openly, without hiding anything." In 1899 after seeing the courtesan Liane de Pougy at a dance hall in Paris, Barney presented herself at de Pougy's residence in a page costume and announced she was a "page of love" sent by Sappho. Although de Pougy was one of the most famous women in France, constantly sought after by wealthy and titled men, Barney's audacity charmed her. Their brief affair became the subject of de Pougy's tell-all roman à clef, Idylle Saphique (Sapphic Idyll). Published in 1901, this book became the talk of Paris, reprinted at least 69 times in its first year. Barney was soon well known as the model for one of the characters. By this time, however, the two had already broken up after quarreling repeatedly over Barney's desire to "rescue" de Pougy from her life as a courtesan.

Barney herself contributed a chapter to Idylle Saphique in which she described reclining at de Pougy's feet in a screened box at the theater, watching Sarah Bernhardt's play Hamlet. During intermission, Barney (as "Flossie") compares Hamlet's plight with that of women: "What is there for women who feel the passion for action when pitiless Destiny holds them in chains? Destiny made us women at a time when the law of men is the only law that is recognized." She also wrote Lettres à une Connue (Letters to a Woman I Have Known), her own epistolary novel about the affair. Although Barney failed to find a publisher for the book and later called it naive and clumsy, it is notable for its discussion of homosexuality, which Barney regarded as natural and compared to albinism. "My queerness," she said, "is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one."

Renée Vivien

In November 1899 Barney met the poet Pauline Tarn, better known by her pen name Renée Vivien. For Vivien it was love at first sight, while Barney became fascinated with Vivien after hearing her recite one of her poems, which she described as "haunted by the desire for death." Their romantic relationship was also a creative exchange that inspired both of them to write. Barney provided a feminist theoretical framework which Vivien explored in her poetry. They adapted the imagery of the Symbolist poets along with the conventions of courtly love to describe love between women, also finding examples of heroic women in history and myth. Sappho was an especially important influence and they studied Greek so as to read the surviving fragments of her poetry in the original. Both wrote plays about her life.

Vivien saw Barney as a muse and as Barney put it, "she had found new inspiration through me, almost without knowing me." Barney felt Vivien had cast her as a femme fatale and that she wanted "to lose herself... entirely in suffering" for the sake of her art. Vivien also believed in fidelity, which Barney was unwilling to agree to. While Barney was visiting her family in Washington, D.C. in 1901, Vivien stopped answering her letters. Barney tried to get her back for years, at one point persuading a friend, operatic mezzo-soprano Emma Calvé, to sing under Vivien's window so she could throw a poem (wrapped around a bouquet of flowers) up to Vivien on her balcony. Both flowers and poem were intercepted and returned by a governess.

In 1904 she wrote Je Me Souviens (I Remember), an intensely personal prose poem about their relationship which was presented as a single handwritten copy to Vivien in an attempt to win her back. They reconciled and travelled together to Lesbos, where they lived happily together for a short time and talked about starting a school of poetry for women like the one which Sappho, according to tradition, had founded on Lesbos some 2,500 years before. However, Vivien soon got a letter from her lover Hélène (the Baroness de Zuylen de Nyevelt) and went to Constantinople thinking she would break up with her in person. Vivien planned to meet Barney in Paris afterward but instead stayed with the Baroness and this time, the breakup was permanent.

Vivien's health declined rapidly after this. According to Vivien's friend and neighbor Colette, she ate almost nothing and drank heavily, even rinsing her mouth with perfumed water to hide the smell. Colette's account has led some to call Vivien an anorexic but this diagnosis did not yet exist at the time. Vivien was also addicted to the sedative chloral hydrate. In 1908 she attempted suicide by overdosing on laudanum and died the following year. In a memoir written fifty years later Barney said "She could not be saved. Her life was a long suicide. Everything turned to dust and ashes in her hands."

Poetry and plays

In 1900 Barney published her first book, a collection of poems called Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes (Some Portrait-Sonnets of Women). The poems were written in traditional French verse and a formal, old fashioned style since Barney did not care for free verse. These poems have been described as "apprentice work" but by publishing them, Barney became the first woman poet to openly write about the love of women since Sappho. Her mother contributed pastel illustrations of the poems' subjects, wholly unaware three of the four women who modeled for her were her daughter's lovers.

Reviews were generally positive and glossed over the lesbian theme of the poems, some even misrepresenting it. The Washington Mirror said Barney "writes odes to men's lips and eyes; not like a novice, either." However, a headline in a society gossip paper cried out "Sappho Sings in Washington" and this alerted her father, who bought and destroyed the publisher's remaining stock and printing plates.

To escape her father's sway Barney published her next book, Cinq Petits Dialogues Grecs (Five Short Greek Dialogues, 1901), under the pseudonym Tryphé. The name came from the works of Pierre Louÿs, who helped to edit and revise the manuscript. Barney also dedicated the book to him. The first of the dialogues is set in ancient Greece and contains a long description of Sappho, who is "more faithful in her inconstancy than others in their fidelity." Another argues for paganism over Christianity. Barney's father's death in 1902 left her with a substantial fortune, freeing her from any need to conceal the authorship of her books; she never used a pseudonym again.

Je Me Souviens was published in 1910 after Vivien's death. That same year, Barney published Actes et Entr'actes (Acts and Interludes), a collection of short plays and poems. One of the plays was Equivoque (Ambiguity), a revisionist version on the legend of Sappho's death: Instead of throwing herself off a cliff for the love of Phaon the sailor, she does so out of grief that Phaon is marrying the woman she loves. The play incorporates quotations from Sappho's fragments, with Barney's own footnotes in Greek.

Barney did not take her poetry as seriously as Vivien did, saying, "if I had one ambition it was to make my life itself into a poem." Her plays were only performed through amateur productions in her garden. According to Karla Jay, most of them lack coherent plots and "would probably baffle even the most sympathetic audience." After 1910 she mostly wrote the epigrams and memoirs for which she is better known. Her last book of poetry was called Poems & Poemes: Autres Alliances and came out in 1920, bringing together romantic poetry in both French and English. Barney asked Ezra Pound to edit the poems but then ignored the detailed recommendations he made.

Salon

For over 60 years Barney hosted a literary salon, a weekly gathering at which people met to socialize and discuss literature, art, music and any other topic of interest. Barney strove to feature women's writing while also hosting some of the most prominent male writers of her time. She brought together expatriate Modernists with members of the French Academy. Joan Schenkar described Barney's salon as "a place where lesbian assignations and appointments with academics could coexist in a kind of cheerful, cross-pollinating, cognitive dissonance."In the 1900s Barney held early gatherings of the salon at her house in Neuilly. The entertainment included poetry readings and theatricals (in which Colette sometimes performed). Mata Hari performed a dance once, riding into the garden as Lady Godiva on a white horse harnessed with turquoise cloisonné.

The play Equivoque may have led Barney to leave Neuilly in 1909. According to a contemporary newspaper article her landlord objected to her holding an outdoor performance of a play about Sappho, which he felt "followed nature too closely". She cancelled her lease and rented the pavillon at 20, Rue Jacob in Paris' Latin Quarter and her salon was held there until the late 1960s. This was a small two-story house, separated on three sides from the main building on the street. Next to the pavillon was a large, overgrown garden with a Doric "Temple of Friendship" tucked into one corner. In this new location the salon grew a more prim outward face, with poetry readings and conversation, perhaps because Barney had been told the pavillon's floors would not hold up to large dancing parties. Frequent guests during this period included Pierre Louÿs, Paul Claudel, Philippe Berthelot and translator J. C. Mardrus.

During World War I the salon became a haven for those opposed to the war. Henri Barbusse once gave a reading from his anti-war novel Under Fire and Barney hosted a Women's Congress for Peace at the Rue Jacob. Other visitors to the salon during the war included Oscar Milosz, Auguste Rodin and poet Alan Seeger, who came while on leave from the French Foreign Legion (he was killed in combat in 1916).

In the early 1920s Ezra Pound was a close friend of Barney's and often visited. The two schemed together to subsidize Paul Valéry and T. S. Eliot so they could quit their jobs and focus on writing, but Valéry found other patrons and Eliot refused the grant. Pound introduced Barney to avant-garde composer George Antheil and while her own taste in music leaned towards the traditional she hosted premieres of Antheil's Symphony for Five Instruments and First String Quartet at the Rue Jacob. It was also at Barney's salon that Pound met his longtime mistress, the violinist Olga Rudge.

In 1927 Barney started an Académie des Femmes (Women's Academy) to honor women writers. This was a response to the influential French Academy which had been founded in the 17th century by Louis XIII and whose 40 "immortals" included no women at the time. Unlike the French Academy, her Women's Academy was not a formal organization, but rather a series of readings held as part of the regular Friday salons. Honorees included Colette, Gertrude Stein, Anna Wickham, Rachilde, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes and posthumously, Renée Vivien.

Other visitors to the salon during the 20s included French writers André Gide, Anatole France, Max Jacob, Louis Aragon and Jean Cocteau along with English-language writers Ford Madox Ford, W. Somerset Maugham, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Thornton Wilder, T. S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams and moreover, German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (the first Nobel laureate from Asia), Romanian aesthetician and diplomat Matila Ghyka, journalist Janet Flanner (who set the New Yorker style), journalist, activist and publisher Nancy Cunard, publishers Caresse and Harry Crosby, art collector and patron Peggy Guggenheim, Sylvia Beach (the bookstore owner who published James Joyce's Ulysses), painters Tamara de Lempicka and Marie Laurencin and dancer Isadora Duncan.

For her 1929 book Aventures de l'Esprit (Adventures of the Mind) Barney drew a social diagram which crowded the names of over a hundred people who had attended the salon into a rough map of the house, garden and Temple of Friendship. The first half of the book had reminiscences of 13 male writers she had known or met over the years and the second half had a chapter for each member of her Académie des Femmes. This gender-balanced structure was not carried through on the book's packaging, which listed eight of the male writers then added "... and some women."

In the late 20s Radclyffe Hall drew a crowd after her novel The Well of Loneliness had lately been banned in the UK. A reading by poet Edna St. Vincent Millay packed the salon in 1932. At another Friday in the 1930s Virgil Thomson sang from Four Saints in Three Acts, an opera based on a libretto by Gertrude Stein.

Of the famous Modernist writers who spent time in Paris, Ernest Hemingway never made an appearance at the salon. James Joyce came once or twice but didn't care for it. Marcel Proust never attended a Friday, though he did come to 20, Rue Jacob once to talk with Barney about lesbian culture whilst doing research for In Search of Lost Time. His visit was put off repeatedly owing to his poor health and when it finally did happen he was too nervous to bring up the subject he had come to talk about.

Epigrams and novel

Èparpillements (Scatterings, 1910) was Barney's first collection of pensées—literally, thoughts. This literary form had been associated with salon culture in France since the 17th century, when the genre was perfected at the salon of Madame de Sablé. Barney's pensées, like de Sablé's own Maximes, were short, often one-line epigrams or bon mots such as "There are more evil ears than bad mouths" and "To be married is to be neither alone nor together."

Her literary career got a boost after she sent a copy of Èparpillements to Remy de Gourmont, a French poet, literary critic, and philosopher who had become a recluse after contracting the disfiguring disease lupus vulgaris in his thirties. He was impressed enough to invite her to one of the Sunday gatherings at his home, at which he usually received only a small group of old friends. She was a rejuvenating influence in his life, coaxing him out for evening car rides, dinners at the Rue Jacob, a masked ball, even a short cruise on the Seine. He turned some of their wide-ranging conversations into a series of letters that he published in the Mercure de France, addressing her as l'Amazone, a French word that can mean either horsewoman or Amazon; the letters were later collected in book form. He died in 1915, but the nickname he gave her would stay with her all her life—even her tombstone identifies her as "the Amazon of Remy de Gourmont"—and his Letters to the Amazon left readers wanting to know more about the woman who had inspired them.

Barney obliged in 1920 with Pensées d'une Amazone (Thoughts of an Amazon), her most overtly political work. In the first section, "Sexual Adversity, War, and Feminism", she developed feminist and pacifist themes, describing war as an "involuntary and collective suicide ordained by man". In war, she said, men "father death as women mother life, with courage and without choice". The epigrammatic form makes it difficult to determine the details of Barney's views; ideas are presented only to be dropped, and some pensées seem to contradict others. Some critics interpret her as saying that the aggression that leads to war is visible in all male relationships. Karla Jay, however, argues that her philosophy was not that sweeping, and is better summed up by the epigram "Those who love war lack the love of an adequate sport—the art of living."

Another section of Pensées d'une Amazone, "Misunderstanding, or Sappho's Lawsuit", gathered historical writings about homosexuality along with her own commentary. She also covered topics such as alcohol, friendship, old age, and literature, writing "Novels are longer than life" and "Romanticism is a childhood ailment; those who had it young are the most robust." A third volume, Nouvelles Pensées de l'Amazone (New Thoughts of the Amazon), appeared in 1939.

The One Who is Legion, or A.D.'s After-Life (1930) was Barney's only book written entirely in English, as well as her only novel. Illustrated by Romaine Brooks, it concerns a suicide, known only as A.D., who is brought back to life as a hermaphroditic being and reads the book of her own life. This book-within-a-book, entitled The Love-Lives of A.D., is a collection of hymns, poems and epigrams, much like Barney's own other writings.

Major relationships

Barney practiced, and advocated, what would today be called polyamory. As early as 1901, in Cinq Petits Dialogues Grecs, she argued in favor of multiple relationships and against jealousy; in Èparpillements she wrote "One is unfaithful to those one loves in order that their charm does not become mere habit." While she could be jealous herself, she actively encouraged at least some of her lovers to be nonmonogamous as well.

Due in part to Jean Chalon's early biography of her, published in English as Portrait of a Seductress, she had become more widely known for her many relationships than for her writing or her salon. She once wrote out a list, divided into three categories: liaisons, demi-liaisons, and adventures. Colette was a demi-liaison, while the artist and furniture designer Eyre de Lanux, with whom she had an off-and-on affair for several years, was listed as an adventure. Among the liaisons—the relationships that she considered most important—were Olive Custance, Renée Vivien, Elisabeth de Gramont, Romaine Brooks, and Dolly Wilde. Of these, the three longest relationships were with de Gramont, Brooks, and Wilde; from 1927, she was involved with all three of them simultaneously, a situation that ended only with Wilde's death. Her shorter affairs, such as those with Colette and Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, often evolved into lifelong friendships.

Elisabeth de Gramont

Elisabeth de Gramont, the Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre, was a writer best known for her popular memoirs. A descendant of Henry IV of France, she had grown up among the aristocracy; when she was a child, according to Janet Flanner, "peasants on her farm... begged her not to clean her shoes before entering their houses". She looked back on this lost world of wealth and privilege with little regret, and became known as the "red duchess" for her support of socialism. She was married and had two daughters in 1910, when she met Natalie Barney; her husband is said to have been violent and tyrannical.They eventually separated, and in 1918 she and Barney wrote up a marriage contract stating that "[n]o one union shall be so strong as this union, nor another joining so tender—nor relationship so lasting."

De Gramont accepted Barney's nonmonogamy—perhaps reluctantly at first—and went out of her way to be gracious to her other lovers, always including Romaine Brooks when she invited Barney to vacation in the country. The relationship continued until de Gramont's death in 1954.

Romaine Brooks

Barney's longest relationship was with the American painter Romaine Brooks, whom she met around 1914. Brooks specialized in portraiture and was noted for her somber palette of gray, black, and white. During the 1920s she painted portraits of several members of Barney's social circle, including de Gramont and Barney herself.

Brooks tolerated Barney's casual affairs well enough to tease her about them, and had a few of her own over the years, but could become jealous when a new love became serious. Usually she simply left town, but at one point she gave Barney an ultimatum to choose between her and Dolly Wilde—relenting once Barney had given in. At the same time, while Brooks was devoted to Barney, she did not want to live with her as a full-time couple; she disliked Paris, disdained Barney's friends, hated the constant socializing on which Barney thrived, and felt that she was fully herself only when alone. To accommodate Brooks's need for solitude they built a summer home consisting of two separate wings joined by a dining room, which they called Villa Trait d'Union, the hyphenated villa. Brooks also spent much of the year in Italy or travelling elsewhere in Europe, away from Barney. They remained devoted to one another for over fifty years.

Dolly Wilde

Dolly Wilde was the niece of Oscar Wilde and the last of her family to bear the Wilde name. She was renowned for her epigrammatic wit but, unlike her famous uncle, never managed to apply her gifts to any publishable writing; her letters are her only legacy. She did some work as a translator and was often supported by others, including Natalie Barney, whom she met in 1927.

Like Vivien, Wilde seemed bent on self-destruction. She drank heavily, was addicted to heroin, and attempted suicide several times. Barney financed detoxifications, which were never effective; she emerged from one nursing-home stay with a new dependency on the sleeping draught paraldehyde, then available over-the-counter.

In 1939 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and refused surgery, seeking alternative treatments. The following year, World War II separated her from Barney; she fled Paris for England while Barney went to Italy with Brooks. She died in 1941 from causes that have never been fully explained, possibly a paraldehyde overdose.

World War II and after

Barney's attitudes during World War II have been controversial. In 1937, Una, Lady Troubridge had complained that Barney "talked a lot of half-baked nonsense about the tyranny of fascism". Barney herself was one-eighth Jewish, and since she spent the war in Italy with Romaine Brooks, risked deportation to a concentration camp—a fate she avoided only by wiring her sister Laura for a notarized document attesting to her confirmation. Nevertheless, having no other source of information about the war, she believed Axis propaganda that portrayed the Allies as the aggressors, so that pro-Fascism seemed to her to be a logical consequence of her pacifism. An unpublished memoir she wrote during the war years is pro-Fascist and anti-Semitic, quoting speeches by Hitler apparently with approval.

It is possible that the anti-Semitic passages in her memoir were intended to be used as evidence that she was not Jewish; alternatively, she may have been influenced by Ezra Pound's anti-Semitic radio broadcasts. Whatever the case, she did help a Jewish couple escape Italy, providing passage on a ship to the United States. By the end of the war her sympathies had again changed, and she saw the Allies as liberators.

Villa Trait d'Union was destroyed by bombing. After the war, Brooks declined to live with Barney in Paris; she remained in Italy, and they visited each other frequently. Their relationship remained monogamous until the mid-1950s, when Barney met her last new love, Janine Lahovary, the wife of a retired Romanian ambassador. Lahovary made a point of winning Romaine Brooks's friendship, Barney reassured Brooks that their relationship still came first, and the triangle appeared to be stable.

The salon resumed in 1949 and continued to attract young writers for whom it was as much a piece of history as a place where literary reputations were made. Truman Capote was an intermittent guest for almost ten years; he described the decor as "totally turn-of-the-century" and remembered that Barney introduced him to the models for several characters in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Alice B. Toklas became a regular after Gertrude Stein's death in 1946. Fridays in the 1960s honored Mary McCarthy and Marguerite Yourcenar, who in 1980—eight years after Barney's death—became the first female member of the French Academy.

Barney did not return to writing epigrams, but did publish two volumes of memoirs about other writers she had known, Souvenirs Indiscrets (Indiscreet Memories, 1960) and Traits et Portraits (Traits and Portraits, 1963). She also worked to find a publisher for Brooks's memoirs and to place her paintings in galleries.

In the late 1960s Brooks became increasingly reclusive and paranoid; she sank into a depression and refused to see the doctors Barney sent. Bitter at Lahovary's presence during their last years, which she had hoped they would spend alone together, she finally broke off contact with Barney. Barney continued to write to her, but received no replies. Brooks died in December 1970, and Barney on 2 February 1972 of heart failure.

Legacy

By the end of Barney's life her work had been largely forgotten. In 1979, Nathalie Barney was honored with a place setting in Judy Chicago's feminist work of art The Dinner Party. In the 1980s Barney began to be recognized for what Karla Jay calls an "almost uncanny anticipation" of the concerns of later feminist writers. English translations of some of her memoirs, essays, and epigrams appeared in 1992, but most of her plays and poetry are still untranslated.

Her indirect influence on literature, through her salon and her many literary friendships, can be seen in the number of writers who have addressed or portrayed her in their works. Claudine S'en Va (Claudine and Annie, 1903) by Colette contains a brief appearance by Barney as "Miss Flossie," echoing the nickname she had earlier been given in de Pougy's novel Idylle Saphique. Renée Vivien wrote many poems about her, as well as a Symbolist novel, Une Femme M'Apparut (A Woman Appeared to Me, 1904), in which she is described as having "eyes ... as sharp and blue as a blade.... The charm of peril emanated from her and drew me inexorably." Remy de Gourmont addressed her in his Letters to the Amazon, and Truman Capote mentioned her in his last, unfinished novel Answered Prayers. She also appeared in two later novels by writers who never met her: Francesco Rapazzini's Un Soir chez l'Amazone (An Evening with the Amazon, 2004) is a historical novel about Barney's salon, while Anna Livia's Minimax (1991) portrays both her and Renee Vivien as still-living vampires.

According to Lillian Faderman, "There was probably no lesbian in the four decades between 1928 and the late 1960s capable of reading English or any of the eleven languages into which the book was translated who was unfamiliar with The Well of Loneliness." Although the novel's author, Radclyffe Hall, intended it as an argument for greater tolerance for what she called "sexual inverts", it has often been criticized by lesbian readers for its protagonist's self-hatred and its use of terms like "freak" and "mistake of nature". Barney, as the salon hostess Valérie Seymour, appears in the novel as the symbol of a different attitude. "Valérie, placid and self-assured, created an atmosphere of courage; everyone felt very normal and brave when they gathered together at Valérie Seymour's."

Lucie Delarue-Mardrus wrote love poems to Barney in the early years of the century, and in 1930 depicted her in a novel, L'Ange et les Pervers (The Angel and the Perverts), in which she said she "analyzed and described Natalie at length as well as the life into which she initiated me". The protagonist of the novel is a hermaphrodite named Marion who lives a double life, frequenting literary salons in female dress, then changing from skirt to trousers to attend gay soirées. Barney is Laurette Wells, a salon hostess who spends much of the novel trying to win back an ex-lover loosely based on Renée Vivien. The book's portrayal of her is at times harshly critical, but she is the only person whose company Marion enjoys. He/she tells Wells that she is "perverse... dissolute, self-centered, unfair, stubborn, sometimes miserly... [but] a genuine rebel, ever ready to incite others to rebellion.... [Y]ou are capable of loving someone just as they are, even a thief—in that lies your only fidelity. And so you have my respect."

After meeting Barney in the 1930s, the Russian poet Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva addressed her in a Letter to the Amazon (1934) in which she expressed her conflicted feelings about love between women. The result, according to Terry Castle, is "an entirely cryptic, paranoid, overwhelming piece of reverie".

Barney and the women in her social circle are the subject of Djuna Barnes's Ladies Almanack (1928), a roman à clef written in an archaic, Rabelaisian style, with Barnes's own illustrations in the style of Elizabethan woodcuts. She has the lead role as Dame Evangeline Musset, "who was in her Heart one Grand Red Cross for the Pursuance, the Relief and the Distraction, of such Girls as in their Hinder Parts, and their Fore Parts, and in whatsoever Parts did suffer them most, lament Cruelly". "[A] Pioneer and a Menace" in her youth, Dame Musset has reached "a witty and learned Fifty"; she rescues women in distress, dispenses wisdom, and upon her death is elevated to sainthood. Also appearing pseudonymously are Elisabeth de Gramont, Romaine Brooks, Dolly Wilde, Radclyffe Hall and her partner Una, Lady Troubridge, Janet Flanner and Solita Solano, and Mina Loy. The obscure language, inside jokes, and ambiguity of Ladies Almanack have kept critics arguing about whether it is an affectionate satire or a bitter attack, but Barney herself loved the book and reread it throughout her life.

Thanks !

Atmosphere of Jupiter

2009-08-25T15:08:00.000-07:00

The atmosphere of Jupiter is the largest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System. It is primarily made of molecular hydrogen and helium in roughly solar proportions; other chemical compounds are present only in small amounts and include: methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide and water. Although water is thought to reside deep in the atmosphere, its directly measured concentration is very low. The oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and noble gas abundances in Jupiter's atmosphere exceed solar values by a factor of about three. The atmosphere of Jupiter lacks a clear lower boundary and gradually transitions into the fluid interior of the planet. From lowest to highest, the atmospheric layers are the troposphere, stratosphere, thermosphere and exosphere. Each layer has characteristic temperature gradients. The lowest layer, the troposphere, has a complicated system of clouds and hazes, comprising layers of ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide and water. The upper ammonia clouds visible at Jupiter's surface are organized in a dozen zonal bands parallel to the equator and are bounded by powerful zonal atmospheric flows (winds) known as jets. The bands alternate in color: the dark bands are called belts, while light ones are called zones. Zones, which are colder than belts, correspond to upwellings, while belts mark descending air. The zones' lighter color is believed to result from ammonia ice; what gives the belts their darker colors is not known with certainty.The origins of the banded structure and jets are not well understood, though two models exist. The shallow model holds that they are surface phenomena overlaying a stable interior. In the deep model, the bands and jets are just surface manifestations of deep circulation in Jupiter's mantle of molecular hydrogen, which is organized in a number of cylinders.

The Jovian atmosphere shows a wide range of active phenomena, including band instabilities, vortices (cyclones and anticyclones), storms and lightning. The vortices reveal themselves as large red, white or brown spots (ovals). The largest two spots are the Great Red Spot (GRS) and Oval BA, which is also red. These two and most of the other large spots are anticyclonic. Smaller anticyclones tend to be white. Vortices are thought to be relatively shallow structures with depths not exceeding several hundred kilometers. Located in the southern hemisphere, the GRS is the largest known vortex in the Solar System. It could engulf several Earths and has existed for at least three hundred years. Oval BA, south of GRS, is a red spot a third the size of GRS that formed in 2000 from the merging of three white ovals.
Jupiter has powerful storms, always accompanied by lightning strikes. The storms are a result of moist convection in the atmosphere connected to the evaporation and condensation of water. They are sites of strong upward motion of the air, which leads to the formation of bright and dense clouds. The storms form mainly in belt regions. The lightning strikes on Jupiter are more powerful than those on Earth. However, there are fewer of them, and the average levels of lightning activity are comparable to those on Earth.

Vertical structure

The atmosphere of Jupiter is classified into four layers, by increasing altitude: the troposphere, stratosphere, thermosphere and exosphere. Unlike the Earth's atmosphere, Jupiter's lacks a mesosphere. Jupiter does not have a solid surface, and the lowest atmospheric layer, the troposphere, smoothly transitions into the planet's fluid interior. This is a result of having temperatures and the pressures well above those of the critical points for hydrogen and helium, meaning that there is no sharp boundary between gas and liquid phases.
Since the lower boundary of the atmosphere is ill-defined, the pressure level of 10 bars, at an altitude of about 90 km below the 1 bar pressure level with a temperature of around 340 K, is commonly treated as the base of the troposphere. In scientific literature, the 1 bar pressure level is usually chosen as a zero point for altitudes—a "surface" of Jupiter. As with Earth, the top atmospheric layer, the exosphere, does not have a well defined upper boundary. The density gradually decreases until it smoothly transitions into the interplanetary medium approximately 5,000 km above the "surface".
The vertical temperature variations in the Jovian atmosphere are similar to those of the atmosphere of Earth. The temperature of the troposphere decreases with height until it reaches a minimum at the tropopause, which is the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere. On Jupiter, the tropopause is approximately 50 km above the visible clouds (or 1 bar level), where the pressure and temperature are about 0.1 bar and 110 K. In the stratosphere, the temperatures rise to about 200 K at the transition into the thermosphere, at an altitude and pressure of around 320 km and 1 μbar. In the thermosphere, temperatures continue to rise, eventually reaching 1000 K at about 1000 km, where pressure is about 1 nbar.
Jupiter's troposphere contains a complicated cloud structure. The visible clouds, located in the pressure range 0.7–1.0 bar, are made of ammonia ice. Below these ammonia ice clouds, clouds made of ammonium hydrosulfide or ammonium sulfide (between 1.5–3 bar) and water (3–7 bar) are thought to exist. There are no methane clouds as the temperatures are too high for it to condense. The water clouds form the densest layer of clouds and have the strongest influence on the dynamics of the atmosphere. This is a result of the higher condensation heat of water and higher water abundance as compared to the ammonia and hydrogen sulfide (oxygen is a more abundant chemical element than either nitrogen or sulfur). Various tropospheric (at 0.2 bar) and stratospheric (at 10 mbar) haze layers reside above the main cloud layers. The latter are made from condensed heavy polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or hydrazine, which are generated in the upper stratosphere (1–100 μbar) from methane under the influence of the solar ultraviolet radiation (UV). The methane abundance relative to molecular hydrogen in the stratosphere is about 10⁻⁴, while the abundance ratio of other light hydrocarbons, like ethane and acetylene, to molecular hydrogen is about 10⁻⁶.
Jupiter's thermosphere is located at pressures lower than 1 μbar and demonstrates such phenomena as airglow, polar aurorae and X-ray emissions. Within it lie layers of increased electron and ion density that form the ionosphere. The high temperatures prevalent in the thermosphere (800–1000 K) have not been fully explained yet; existing models predict a temperature no higher than about 400 K.They may be caused by absorption of high-energy solar radiation (UV or X-ray), by heating from the charged particles precipitating from the Jovian magnetosphere, or by dissipation of upward-propagating gravity waves. The thermosphere and exosphere at the poles and at low latitudes emit X-rays, which were first observed by the Einstein Observatory in 1983. The energetic particles coming from Jupiter's magnetosphere create bright auroral ovals, which encircle the poles. Unlike their terrestrial analogs, which appear only during magnetic storms, aurorae are permanent features of Jupiter's atmosphere. The thermosphere was the first place outside the Earth where the trihydrogen cation (H₃⁺) was discovered. This ion emits strongly in the mid-infrared part of the spectrum, at wavelengths between 3 and 5 μm; this is the main cooling mechanism of the thermosphere.

Chemical composition

The composition of Jupiter's atmosphere is similar to that of the planet as a whole. Jupiter's atmosphere is the most comprehensively understood of those of all the gas giants because it was observed directly by the Galileo atmospheric probe when it entered the Jovian atmosphere on December 7, 1995. Other sources of information about Jupiter's atmospheric composition include the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), the Galileo and Cassini orbiters, and Earth-based observations.

The two main constituents of the Jovian atmosphere are molecular hydrogen (H₂) and helium. The helium abundance is 0.157 ± 0.0036 relative to molecular hydrogen by number of molecules, and its mass fraction is 0.234 ± 0.005, which is slightly lower than the solar system's primordial value. The reason for this low abundance is not entirely understood, but, being denser than hydrogen, some of the helium may have condensed into the core of Jupiter. The atmosphere contains various simple compounds such as water, methane (CH₄), hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), ammonia (NH₃) and phosphine (PH₃). Their abundances in the deep (below 10 bar) troposphere imply that the atmosphere of Jupiter is enriched in the elements carbon, nitrogen, sulfur and possibly oxygen by factor of 2–4 relative to the Sun.The noble gases argon, krypton and xenon appear to be enriched relative to solar abundances as well (see table), while neon is scarcer. Other chemical compounds such as arsine (AsH₃) and germane (GeH₄) are present only in trace amounts. The upper atmosphere of Jupiter contains small amounts of simple hydrocarbons such as ethane, acetylene, and diacetylene, which form from methane under the influence of the solar ultraviolet radiation and charged particles coming from Jupiter's magnetosphere. The carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and water present in the upper atmosphere are thought to originate from impacting comets, such as Shoemaker-Levy 9. The water cannot come from the troposphere because the cold tropopause acts like a cold trap, effectively preventing water from rising to the stratosphere (see Vertical structure above).

Earth- and spacecraft-based measurements have led to improved knowledge of the isotopic ratios in Jupiter's atmosphere. As of July 2003, the accepted value for the deuterium abundance is 2.25 ± 0.35 × 10⁻⁵, which probably represents the primordial value in the protosolar nebula that gave birth to the Solar System. The ratio of nitrogen isotopes in the Jovian atmosphere, ¹⁵N to ¹⁴N, is 2.3 × 10⁻³, a third lower than that in the Earth's atmosphere (3.5 × 10⁻³). The latter discovery is especially significant since the previous theories of Solar System formation considered the terrestrial value for the ratio of nitrogen isotopes to be primordial.

Zones, belts and jets

The visible surface of Jupiter is divided in a number of bands parallel to the equator. There are two types of bands: lightly colored zones and relatively dark belts. The wide Equatorial Zone (EZ) extends between latitudes of approximately 7°S to 7°N. Above and below the EZ, the North and South Equatorial belts (NEB and SEB) extend to 18°N and 18°S, respectively. Farther from the equator lie the North and South Tropical zones (NtrZ and STrZ). The alternating pattern of belts and zones continues until the polar regions at approximately 50 degrees latitude, where their visible appearance becomes somewhat muted. The basic belt-zone structure probably extends well towards the poles, reaching at least to 80° North or South.

The difference in the appearance between zones and belts is caused by differences in the opacity of the clouds. Ammonia concentration is higher in zones, which leads to the appearance of denser clouds of ammonia ice at higher altitudes, which in turn leads to their lighter color. On the other hand, in belts clouds are thinner and are located at lower altitudes. The upper troposphere is colder in zones and warmer in belts. The exact nature of chemicals that make Jovian zones and bands so colorful is not known, but they may include complicated compounds of sulfur, phosphorus and carbon.

The Jovian bands are bounded by zonal atmospheric flows (winds), called jets. The westward (retrograde) jets are found at the transition from zones to belts (going away from the equator), whereas eastward (prograde) jets mark the transition from belts to zones. Such flow velocity patterns mean that the zonal winds decrease in belts and increase in zones from the equator to the pole. Therefore wind shear in belts is cyclonic, while in zones it is anticyclonic. The EZ is an exception to this rule, showing a strong eastward (prograde) jet and has a local minimum of the wind speed exactly at the equator. The jet speeds are high on Jupiter, reaching more than 100 m/s. These speeds correspond to ammonia clouds located in the pressure range 0.7–1 bar. The prograde jets are generally more powerful than the retrograde jets. The vertical extent of jets is not known. They decay over two to three scale heights above the clouds, while below the cloud level, winds increase slightly and then remain constant down to at least 22 bar—the maximum operational depth reached by the Galileo probe.

The origin of Jupiter's banded structure is not completely clear, though it may be similar to that driving the Earth's Hadley cells. The simplest interpretation is that zones are sites of atmospheric upwelling, whereas belts are manifestations of downwelling. When air enriched in ammonia rises in zones, it expands and cools, forming high and dense clouds. In belts, however, the air descends, warming adiabatically, and white ammonia clouds evaporate, revealing lower, darker clouds. The location and width of bands, speed and location of jets on Jupiter are remarkably stable, having changed only rarely between 1980 and 2000. One example of change is a slight decrease of the speed of the strongest eastward jet located at the boundary between the North Tropical zone and North Temperate belts at 23°N. However bands vary in coloration and intensity over time (see below).

Specific bands

The belts and zones that divide Jupiter's atmosphere each have their own names and unique characteristics. They begin below the North and South Polar Regions, which extend from the poles to roughly 40–48° N/S. These bluish-gray regions are usually featureless.

The North North Temperate Region rarely shows more detail than the polar regions, due to limb darkening, foreshortening, and the general diffuseness of features. That said, the North-North Temperate Belt (NNTB) is the northernmost distinct belt, though it occasionally "disappears". Disturbances tend to be minor and short-lived. The North-North Temperate Zone (NNTZ) is perhaps more prominent, but also generally quiet. Other minor belts and zones in the region are occasionally observed.

The North Temperate Region is part of a latitudinal region easily observable from Earth, and thus has a superb record of observation. It also features the strongest prograde jet stream on the planet—a westerly current that forms the southern boundary of the North Temperate Belt (NTB). The NTB fades roughly once a decade (this was the case during the Voyager encounters), making the North Temperate Zone (NTZ) apparently merge into the North Tropical Zone (NTropZ). Other times, the NTZ is divided by a narrow belt into northern and southern components.

The North Tropical Region is comprised of the NTropZ and the North Equatorial Belt (NEB). The NTropZ is generally stable in coloration, changing in tint only in tandem with activity on the NTB's southern jet stream. Like the NTZ, it too is sometimes divided by a narrow band, the NTropB. On rare occasions, the southern NTropZ plays host to "Little Red Spots". As the name suggests, these are northern equivalents of the Great Red Spot. Unlike the GRS, they tend to occur in pairs and are always short-lived, lasting a year on average; one was present during the Pioneer 10 encounter.

The NEB is one of the most active belts on the planet. It is characterized by anticyclonic white ovals and cyclonic "barges" (also known as "brown ovals"), with the former usually forming farther north than the latter; as in the NTropZ, most of these features are relatively short-lived. Like the South Equatorial Belt (SEB), the NEB has sometimes dramatically faded and "revived". The timescale of these changes is about 25 years.

The Equatorial Region (EZ) is one of the more stable regions of the planet, in latitude and in activity. The northern edge of the EZ hosts spectacular plumes that trail southwest from the NEB, which are bounded by dark, warm (in infrared) features known as festoons (hot spots). Though the southern boundary of the EZ is usually quiescent, observations from the late 19th into the early 20th century show that this pattern was then reversed relative to today. The EZ varies considerably in coloration, from pale to an ochre, or even coppery hue; it is occasionally divided by an Equatorial Band (EB). Features in the EZ move roughly 390 km/h relative to the other latitudes.

The South Tropical Region includes the SEB and the South Tropical Zone. It is by far the most active on the planet, as it is home to its strongest retrograde jet stream. The SEB is usually the broadest, darkest belt on Jupiter; however, it is sometimes split by a zone (the SEBZ), and can fade entirely during a SEB Revival cycle. Another characteristic of the SEB is a long train of cyclonic disturbances following the Great Red Spot. Like the NTropZ, the STropZ is one of the most prominent zones on the planet; not only does it contain the GRS, but it is occasionally rent by a South Tropical Disturbance (STropD), a division of the zone that can be very long-lived; the most famous one lasted from 1901 to 1939.

The South Temperate Region, or South Temperate Belt (STB), is yet another dark, prominent belt, more so than the NTB; until March 2000, its most famous features were the long-lived white ovals BC, DE, and FA, which have since merged to form Oval BA ("Red Jr."). The ovals actually were part of South Temperate Zone, but they extended into STB partially blocking it. The STB has occasionally faded, apparently due to complex interactions between the white ovals and the GRS. The appearance of the South Temperate Zone (STZ)—the zone in which the white ovals originated—is highly variable.

There are a number of other features on Jupiter that are either temporary or difficult to observe from Earth. The South South Temperate Region is harder to discern even than the NNTR; its detail is subtle and can only be studied well by large telescopes or spacecraft. Many zones and belts are more transient in nature and are not always visible. These include the Equatorial band (EB), North Equatorial belt zone (NEBZ, a white zone within the belt) and South Equatorial belt zone (SEBZ). Belts are also occasionally split by a sudden disturbance. When a disturbance divides a normally singular belt or zone, an N or an S is added to indicate whether the component is the northern or southern one; e.g., NEB(N) and NEB(S).

Dynamics

Circulation in Jupiter's atmosphere is markedly different from that in the atmosphere of Earth. The interior of Jupiter is fluid and lacks any solid surface. Therefore, convection may occur throughout the planet's outer molecular envelope. As of 2008, a comprehensive theory of the dynamics of the Jovian atmosphere has not been developed. Any such theory needs to explain the following facts: the existence of narrow stable bands and jets that are symmetric relative to Jupiter's equator, the strong prograde jet observed at the equator, the difference between zones and belts, and the origin and persistence of large vortices such as the Great Red Spot.

The theories regarding the dynamics of the Jovian atmosphere can be broadly divided into two classes: shallow and deep. The former hold that the observed circulation is largely confined to a thin outer (weather) layer of the planet, which overlays the stable interior. The latter hypothesis postulates that the observed atmospheric flows are only a surface manifestation of deeply rooted circulation in the outer molecular envelope of Jupiter. As both theories have their own successes and failures, many planetary scientists actually think that the true theory will include elements of both models.

Shallow models

The first attempts to explain Jovian atmospheric dynamics date back to the 1960s.They were partly based on terrestrial meteorology, which was well developed at that time. Those shallow models assumed that the jets on Jupiter are driven by small scale turbulence, which is in turn maintained by moist convection in the outer layer of the atmosphere (above the water clouds). The moist convection is a phenomenon related to the condensation and evaporation of water and is one of the major drivers of terrestrial weather. The production of the jets in this model is related to a well-known property of two dimensional turbulence—the so-called inverse cascade, in which small turbulent structures (vortices) merge to form larger ones. The finite size of the planet means that the cascade can not produce structures larger than some characteristic scale, which for Jupiter is called the Rhines scale. Its existence is connected to production of Rossby waves. This process works as follows: when the largest turbulent structures reach a certain size, the energy begins to flow into Rossby waves instead of larger structures, and the inverse cascade stops. Since on the spherical rapidly rotating planet the dispersion relation of the Rossby waves is anisotropic, the Rhines scale in the direction parallel to the equator is larger than in the direction orthogonal to it. The ultimate result of the process described above is production of large scale elongated structures, which are parallel to the equator. The meridional extent of them appears to match the actual width of jets. Therefore in shallow models vortices actually feed the jets and should disappear by merging into them.

While these weather–layer models can successfully explain the existence of a dozen narrow jets, they have serious problems. A glaring failure of the model is the prograde (super-rotating) equatorial jet: with some rare exceptions shallow models produce a strong retrograde (subrotating) jet, contrary to observations. In addition, the jets tend to be unstable and can disappear over time. Shallow models cannot explain how the observed atmospheric flows on Jupiter violate stability criteria. More elaborated multilayer versions of weather–layer models produce more stable circulation, but many problems persist. Meanwhile, the Galileo probe found that the winds on Jupiter extend well below the water clouds at 5–7 bar and do not show any evidence of decay down to 22 bar pressure level, which implies that circulation in the Jovian atmosphere may in fact be deep.

Deep models

The deep model was first proposed by Busse in 1976. His model was based on another well-known feature of fluid mechanics, the Taylor-Proudman theorem. It holds that in any fast-rotating barotropic ideal liquid, the flows are organized in a series of cylinders parallel to the rotational axis. The conditions of the theorem are probably met in the fluid Jovian interior. Therefore the planet's molecular hydrogen mantle may be divided into a number of cylinders, each cylinder having a circulation independent of the others. Those latitudes where the cylinders' outer and inner boundaries intersect with the visible surface of the planet correspond to the jets; the cylinders themselves are observed as zones and belts.

The deep model easily explains the strong prograde jet observed at the equator of Jupiter; the jets it produces are stable and do not obey the 2D stability criterion. However it has major difficulties; it produces a very small number of broad jets, and realistic simulations of 3D flows are not possible as of 2008, meaning that the simplified models used to justify deep circulation may fail to catch important aspects of the fluid dynamics within Jupiter. One model published in 2004 successfully reproduced the Jovian band-jet structure. It assumed that the molecular hydrogen mantle is thinner than in all other models; occupying only the outer 10% of the Jupiter’s radius. In standard models of the Jovian interior, the mantle comprises the outer 20–30%. The driving of deep circulation is another problem. In fact, the deep flows can be caused both by shallow forces (moist convection, for instance) or by deep planet-wide convection that transports heat out of the Jovian interior. Which of these mechanisms is more important is not clear yet.

Internal heat

As has been known since 1966, Jupiter radiates much more heat than it receives from the Sun. It is estimated that the ratio between the power emitted by the planet and that absorbed from the Sun is 1.67 ± 0.09. The internal heat flux from Jupiter is 5.44 ± 0.43 W/m², whereas the total emitted power is 335 ± 26 petawatts. The latter value is approximately equal to one billionth of the total power radiated by the Sun. This excess heat is mainly the primordial heat from the early phases of Jupiter's formation, but may result in part from the precipitation of helium into the core.

The internal heat may be important for the dynamics of the Jovian atmosphere. While Jupiter has a small obliquity of about 3°, and its poles receive much less solar radiation than its equator, the tropospheric temperatures do not change appreciably from the equator to poles. One explanation is that Jupiter's convective interior acts like a thermostat, releasing more heat near the poles than in the equatorial region. This leads to a uniform temperature in the troposphere. While heat is transported from the equator to the poles via the atmosphere on Earth, on Jupiter deep convection equilibrates heat. The convection in the Jovian interior is thought to be driven mainly by the internal heat.

Discrete features

Vortices

The atmosphere of Jupiter is home to hundreds of vortices—circular rotating structures that, as in the Earth’s atmosphere, can be divided into two classes: cyclones and anticyclones.The former rotate in the direction similar to the rotation of the planet (counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern); the latter rotate in the reverse direction. However a major difference from the terrestrial atmosphere is that, in the Jovian atmosphere, anticyclones dominate over cyclones, as more than 90% of vortices larger than 2000 km in diameter are anticyclones. The lifetime of vortices varies from several days to hundreds of years depending on their size. For instance, the average lifetime of anticyclones with diameters from 1000 to 6000 km is 1–3 years. Vortices have never been observed in the equatorial region of Jupiter (within 10° of latitude), where they are unstable. As on any rapidly rotating planet, Jupiter's anticyclones are high pressure centers, while cyclones are low pressure.

The anticyclones in Jupiter's atmosphere are always confined within zones, where the wind speed increases in direction from the equator to the poles. They are usually bright and appear as white ovals. They can move in longitude, but stay at approximately the same latitude as they are unable to escape from the confining zone. The wind speeds at their periphery are about 100 m/s. Different anticyclones located in one zone tend to merge, when they approach each other. However Jupiter has two anticyclones that are somewhat different from all others. They are the Great Red Spot (GRS) and the Oval BA; the latter formed only in 2000. In contrast to white ovals, these structures are red, arguably due to dredging up of red material from the planet's depths. On Jupiter the anticyclones usually form through merges of smaller structures including convective storms (see below), although large ovals can result from the instability of jets. The latter was observed in 1938–1940, when a few white ovals appeared as a result of instability of the southern temperate zone; they later merged to form Oval BA.

In contrast to anticyclones, the Jovian cyclones tend to be small, dark and irregular structures. Some of the darker and more regular features are known as brown ovals (or badges). However the existence of a few long–lived large cyclones has been suggested. In addition to compact cyclones, Jupiter has several large irregular filamentary patches, which demonstrate cyclonic rotation. One of them is located to the west of the GRS (in its wake region) in the southern equatorial belt. These patches are called cyclonic regions (CR). The cyclones are always located in the belts and tend to merge when they encounter each other, much like anticyclones.

The deep structure of vortices is not completely clear. They are thought to be relatively thin, as any thickness greater than about 500 km will lead to instability. The large anticyclones are known to extend only a few tens of kilometers above the visible clouds. The early hypothesis that the vortices are deep convective plumes (or convective columns) as of 2008 is not shared by the majority of planetary scientists.

Great Red Spot

The Great Red Spot (GRS) is a persistent anticyclonic storm, 22° south of Jupiter's equator, which has lasted for at least 179 years and possibly as long as 344 years or more. The storm is large enough to be visible through Earth-based telescopes.

The GRS rotates counterclockwise, with a period of about six Earth days or 14 Jovian days. Its dimensions are 24–40,000 km west–to–east and 12–14,000 km south–to–north. The spot is large enough to contain two or three planets the size of Earth. At the start of 2004, the Great Red Spot had approximately half the longitudinal extent it had a century ago, when it was 40,000 km in diameter. At the present rate of reduction it could potentially become circular by 2040, although this is unlikely because of the distortion effect of the neighboring jet streams. It is not known how long the spot will last, or whether the change is a result of normal fluctuations.

According to a study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, between 1996 and 2006 the spot lost 15 percent of its diameter along its major axis. Xylar Asay-Davis, who was on the team that conducted the study, noted that the spot is not in danger of disappearing because "elocity is a more robust measurement because the clouds associated with the Red Spot are also strongly influenced by numerous other phenomena in the surrounding atmosphere."

Infrared data have long indicated that the Great Red Spot is colder (and thus, higher in altitude) than most of the other clouds on the planet; the cloudtops of the GRS are about 8 km above the surrounding clouds. Furthermore, careful tracking of atmospheric features revealed the spot's counterclockwise circulation as far back as 1966—observations dramatically confirmed by the first time-lapse movies from the Voyager flybys. The spot is spatially confined by a modest eastward jet stream (prograde) to its south and a very strong westward (retrograde) one to its north. Though winds around the edge of the spot peak at about 120 m/s (430 km/h), currents inside it seem stagnant, with little inflow or outflow. The rotation period of the spot has decreased with time, perhaps as a direct result of its steady reduction in size.

The Great Red Spot's latitude has been stable for the duration of good observational records, typically varying by about a degree. Its longitude, however, is subject to constant variation. Because Jupiter does not rotate uniformly at all latitudes, astronomers have defined three different systems for defining the latitude. System II is used for latitudes of more than 10°, and was originally based on the average rotation rate of the Great Red Spot of 9h 55m 42s. Despite this, the spot has "lapped" the planet in System II at least 10 times since the early nineteenth century. Its drift rate has changed dramatically over the years and has been linked to the brightness of the South Equatorial Belt, and the presence or absence of a South Tropical Disturbance.

It is not known exactly what causes the Great Red Spot's reddish color. Theories supported by laboratory experiments suppose that the color may be caused by complex organic molecules, red phosphorus, or yet another sulfur compound. The GRS varies greatly in hue, from almost brick-red to pale salmon, or even white. The spot occasionally disappears from the visible spectrum, becoming evident only through the Red Spot Hollow, which is its niche in the South Equatorial Belt. The visibility of GRS is apparently coupled to the appearance of the SEB; when the belt is bright white, the spot tends to be dark, and when it is dark, the spot is usually light. The periods when the spot is dark or light occur at irregular intervals; as of 1997, during the preceding 50 years, the spot was darkest in the periods 1961–66, 1968–75, 1989–90, and 1992–93.

The Great Red Spot should not be confused with the Great Dark Spot, a feature observed near the northern pole of Jupiter in 2000 by the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft. Note that a feature in the atmosphere of Neptune was also called the Great Dark Spot. The latter feature was imaged by Voyager 2 in 1989, and may have been an atmospheric hole rather than a storm and it was no longer present in 1994 (although a similar spot had appeared farther to the north).

Oval BA

Oval BA is the official name for a red storm in Jupiter's southern hemisphere similar in form to, though smaller than, the Great Red Spot. Accordingly, it is often referred to as "Red Spot Jr", "Red Jr." or "The Little Red Spot". A feature in the South Temperate Belt, Oval BA was first seen in 2000 after the collision of three small white storms, and has intensified since then.

The formation of the three white oval storms that later merged into Oval BA can be traced to 1939, when the South Temperate Zone was rent by dark features that effectively split the zone into three long sections. Jovian observer Elmer J. Reese labeled the dark sections AB, CD, and EF. The rifts expanded, shrinking the remaining segments of the STZ into the white ovals FA, BC, and DE. Ovals BC and DE merged in 1998, forming Oval BE. Then, in March 2000, BE and FA joined together, forming Oval BA.

Oval BA slowly began to turn red in August 2005. On February 24, 2006, Filipino amateur astronomer Christopher Go discovered the color change, noting that it had reached the same shade as the GRS. As a result, NASA writer Dr. Tony Phillips suggested it be called "Red Spot Jr." or "Red Jr."

In April 2006, a team of astronomers, believing that Oval BA might converge with the GRS that year, observed the storms through the Hubble Space Telescope. The storms pass each other about every two years, but the passings of 2002 and 2004 did not produce anything exciting. Dr. Amy Simon-Miller, of the Goddard Space Flight Center, predicted the storms would have their closest passing on July 4, 2006. On July 20, the two storms were photographed passing each other by the Gemini Observatory without converging.

Why Oval BA turned red is not understood. According to a 2008 study by Dr. Santiago Pérez-Hoyos of the University of the Basque Country, the most likely mechanism is "an upward and inward diffusion of either a colored compound or a coating vapor that may interact later with high energy solar photons at the upper levels of Oval BA."

Oval BA is getting stronger according to observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2007. The wind speeds have reached 618 km/h; about the same as in the Great Red Spot and far stronger than any of the progenitor storms. As of July 2008, its size is about the diameter of Earth—approximately half the size of the Great Red Spot. Oval BA should not be confused with another major storm on Jupiter, the Little Red Spot (or Baby Red Spot) which turned red in May of 2008. It encountered GRS in late June/early July 2008 and was shredded into pieces, which later joined GRS. During this encounter Oval BA was present nearby, but played no apparent role in destruction of the Little Red Spot.

Storms and lightning

The storms on Jupiter are similar to thunderstorms on Earth. They reveal themselves via bright clumpy clouds about 1000 km in size, which appear from time to time in the belts' cyclonic regions, especially within the strong westward (retrograde) jets. In contrast to vortices, storms are short-lived phenomena; the strongest of them may exist for several months, while the mean lifetime is only 3–4 days. They are believed to be due mainly to moist convection within Jupiter's troposphere. Storms are actually tall convective columns (plumes), which bring the wet air from the depths to the upper part of the troposphere, where it condenses in clouds. A typical vertical extent of Jovian storms is about 100 km; as they extend from a pressure level of about 5–7 bar, where the base of a hypothetical water cloud layer is located, to as high as 0.2–0.5 bar.

Storms on Jupiter are always associated with lightning. The imaging of the night–side hemisphere of Jupiter by Galileo and Cassini spacecrafts revealed regular light flashes particularly at 51°N, 56°S and 23°N latitudes; higher latitude flashes concentrated near the locations of the westward jets. The lightning strikes on Jupiter are on average more powerful than those on Earth. However, they are less frequent; the light power emitted from a given area is similar to that on Earth. A few flashes have been detected in polar regions, making Jupiter the second planet after Earth to exhibit polar lightning.

Every 15–17 years Jupiter is rattled by especially powerful storms. They appear at 23°N latitude, where the strongest eastward jet is located. The last such an event was observed in March–June 2007. Two storms appeared in the northern temperate belt 55° apart in longitude. They significantly disturbed the belt. The dark material that was shed by the storms mixed with clouds and changed the belt’s color. The storms moved with a speed as high as 170 m/s, slightly faster than the jet itself, hinting at the existence of strong winds deep in the atmosphere.

Disturbances

The normal pattern of bands and zones is sometimes disrupted for periods of time. One particular class of disruption are long-lived darkenings of the South Tropical Zone, normally referred to as "South Tropical Disturbances" (STD). The longest lived STD in recorded history was followed from 1901 until 1939, having been first seen by Percy B. Molesworth on February 28, 1901. It took the form of darkening over part of the normally bright South Tropical zone. Several similar disturbances in the South Tropical Zone have been recorded since then.

Observational history

Early astronomers, using small telescopes with their eyes as detectors, recorded the changing appearance of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Their descriptive terms—belts and zones, brown spots and red spots, plumes, barges, festoons, and streamers—are still used. Other terms such as vorticity, vertical motion, cloud heights have entered in use later, in the 20th century.

The first observations of the Jovian atmosphere at higher resolution than possible with Earth-based telescopes were taken by the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. The first truly detailed images of Jupiter's atmosphere were provided by the Voyagers. The two spacecraft were able to image details at a resolution as low as 5 km in size in various spectra, and also able to create "approach movies" of the atmosphere in motion. The Galileo probe saw less of Jupiter's atmosphere, but at a better average resolution and a wider spectral bandwidth.

Today, astronomers have access to a continuous record of Jupiter's atmospheric activity thanks to telescopes such as Hubble. These show that the atmosphere is occasionally wracked by massive disturbances, but that, overall, it is remarkably stable. The vertical motion of Jupiter's atmosphere was largely determined by the identification of trace gases by ground-based telescopes. Spectroscopic studies after the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 gave a glimpse of the Jupiter's composition beneath the cloud tops. The presence of diatomic sulfur (S₂) and carbon disulfide (CS₂) was recorded—the first detection of either in Jupiter, and only the second detection of S₂ in any astronomical object— together with other molecules such as ammonia (NH₃) and hydrogen sulfide (H₂S), while oxygen-bearing molecules such as sulfur dioxide were not detected, to the surprise of astronomers.

The Galileo atmospheric probe, as it plunged into Jupiter, measured the wind, temperature, composition, clouds, and radiation levels down to 22 bar. However, telescopes and spacecraft cannot detect below 1 bar.

Great Red Spot studies

The first sighting of the GRS is often credited to Robert Hooke, who described a spot on the planet in May 1664; however, it is likely that Hooke's spot was in the wrong belt altogether (the North Equatorial Belt, versus the current location in the South Equatorial Belt). Much more convincing is Giovanni Cassini's description of a "permanent spot" in the following year. With fluctuations in visibility, Cassini's spot was observed from 1665 to 1713.

A minor mystery concerns a Jovian spot depicted around 1700 on a canvas by Donato Creti, which is exhibited in the Vatican. It is a part of a series of panels in which different (magnified) heavenly bodies serve as backdrops for various Italian scenes, the creation of all of them overseen by the astronomer Eustachio Manfredi for accuracy. Creti's painting is the first known to depict the GRS as red. No Jovian feature was officially described as red before the late 1800s.

The present GRS was first seen only after 1830 and well-studied only after a prominent apparition in 1879. A long 118-year gap separates the observations made after 1830 from its seventeenth-century discovery; whether the original spot dissipated and re-formed, whether it faded, or even if the observational record was simply poor are unknown. The older spots had a short observational history and slower motion than that of the modern spot, which make their identity unlikely.

On February 25, 1979, when the Voyager 1 spacecraft was 9.2 million km from Jupiter it transmitted the first detailed image of the Great Red Spot back to Earth. Cloud details as small as 160 km across were visible. The colorful, wavy cloud pattern seen to the west (left) of the GRS is the spot's wake region, where extraordinarily complex and variable cloud motions are observed.

White ovals

The white ovals that were to become Oval BA formed in 1939. They covered almost 90 degrees of longitude shortly after their formation, but contracted rapidly during their first decade; their length stabilized at 10 degrees or less after 1965. Although they originated as segments of the STZ, they evolved to become completely embedded in the South Temperate Belt, suggesting that they moved north, "digging" a niche into the STB. Indeed, much like the GRS, their circulations were confined by two opposing jet streams on their northern and southern boundaries, with an eastward jet to their north and a retrograde westward one to the south.

The longitudinal movement of the ovals seemed to be influenced by two factors: Jupiter's position in its orbit (they became faster at aphelion), and their proximity to the GRS (they accelerated when within 50 degrees of the Spot). The overall trend of the white oval drift rate was deceleration, with a decrease by half between 1940 and 1990.

During the Voyager fly-bys, the ovals extended roughly 9000 km from east to west, 5000 km from north to south, and rotated every five days (compared to six for the GRS at the time).

Thanks !