Astronomers have long been fascinated by Jupiter’s Great Red Spot (GRS), a colossal anticyclone large enough to swallow Earth, observed for over 150 years. Yet, despite its legendary status, the iconic storm continues to reveal surprises. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, using its high-resolution capabilities, recently uncovered new and unexpected dynamics within the GRS during observations taken from December 2023 to March 2024.
Hubble’s latest findings show the GRS behaving in a way that scientists hadn’t anticipated oscillating in size and moving in an almost jelly-like manner. The detailed data collected over 90 days enabled researchers to create a time-lapse movie, capturing the GRS’s “squiggly” and fluctuating behavior.
“We’ve known its longitude motion varies slightly, but witnessing its size oscillating was completely unexpected,” said Amy Simon from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the lead author of the study published in The Planetary Science Journal. “With Hubble’s high resolution, we’ve been able to observe the GRS squeezing in and out, accelerating and decelerating in a way that had not been identified before.”
This newly discovered behavior marks the first time scientists have had access to such detailed, continuous imaging of the GRS, revealing both subtle changes in shape and size. Interestingly, the storm’s core appears to brighten in ultraviolet light at its largest size, signaling less haze absorption in the upper atmosphere.
The oscillations in the storm are believed to result from the GRS pressing against the powerful jet streams that sandwich it at a fixed southern latitude on Jupiter. These jet streams, flowing to the north and south of the GRS, seem to confine the storm, preventing it from drifting freely, unlike Neptune’s dark spots, which can move more erratically due to the lack of jet streams.
This close-up study of Jupiter’s GRS offers critical insights into understanding giant storms on gas giants, which can, in turn, provide clues to weather patterns on exoplanets. Hubble’s annual Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program (OPAL) usually observes outer planets like Jupiter, but this dedicated study of the GRS offers a fresh perspective on how some of the largest storms in our solar system behave over time.
As scientists continue to analyze the data from these observations, they hope to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics at play within Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. This ongoing research not only sheds light on one of the most famous storms in our solar system but also enhances our comprehension of meteorological processes across the universe.
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