Hubble Telescope's gorgeous new Jupiter views could help demystify shrinking Great Red Spot
Here's NASA's new portrait of Jupiter.
An amazing new image of Jupiter captured by the Hubble Space Telescope could shed light on the gas giant's mysterious atmospheric dynamics.
One of the most prominent mysteries involves Jupiter's famous Great Red Spot, which has been shrinking since at least the 1800s.
The centuries-old enigma is very complex, said officials with the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, which runs Hubble's science mission: "Attempting to understand the forces driving Jupiter's atmosphere is like trying to predict the pattern cream will make when it is poured into a hot cup of coffee."
This new Hubble Space Telescope view of Jupiter, taken on June 27, 2019, reveals the giant planet's trademark Great Red Spot, and a more intense color palette in the clouds swirling in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere than seen in previous years. Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observed Jupiter when the planet was 400 million miles (640 million kilometers) from Earth, when Jupiter was near "opposition," or almost directly opposite the sun in the sky.
(Image credit: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley))
But scientists have tried. The Earth-orbiting Hubble turns its eyes to all the outer solar system planets at least once a year to check on their weather. And luckily, Jupiter has an interplanetary visitor — NASA's Juno spacecraft — scanning the planet's clouds to gather more information.
Just over a year ago, Hubble observations showed that the spot is getting taller and turning orange as it shrinks in diameter. Historical work suggests that the Great Red Spot was once large enough to cover the width of three Earths, but as of April 2017, the storm was just a little wider than one Earth, raging at a diameter of 10,159 miles (16,350 kilometers), according to NASA.
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