#great red spot
What will become of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot? Gas giant Jupiter is the solar system’s largest world with about 320 times the mass of planet Earth. Jupiter is home to one of the largest and longest lasting storm systems known, the Great Red Spot (GRS), visible to the left. The GRS is so large it could swallow Earth- but it has been shrinking. Comparison with historical notes indicate that the storm spans only about one third of the exposed surface area it had 150 years ago. NASA’s Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program has been monitoring the storm more recently using the Hubble Space Telescope. The featured Hubble OPAL image shows Jupiter as it appeared in 2016, processed in a way that makes red hues appear quite vibrant. Modern GRS data indicate that the storm continues to constrict its surface area, but is also becoming slightly taller, vertically. No one knows the future of the GRS, including the possibility that if the shrinking trend continues, the GRS might one day even do what smaller spots on Jupiter have done – disappear completely.
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble, OPAL Program, STScI; Processing: Karol Masztalerz
Europa & Io passing over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, shot from space probe Cassini.
Europa & Io passing over Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, shot from space probe Cassini.
for everyone asking if this is real footage: yeah!
It is an extremely accelerated timelapse made by Kevin Gill, the movement here is more a matter of Cassini whipping past Jupiter at astounding speeds than the motion of the moons, which is why there’s such a large parallax shift, but it’s actual images taken during the Cassini flyby. They did another one of Titan orbiting Saturn, you can see that at the end of this video. [Flickr link]
