Browsing Tag
Jupiter’s
5 posts
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is Wobbling and Fluctuating in Size, Hubble Observations Show
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observed Jupiter’s most distinctive feature, the Great Red Spot, with on eight dates over a single, 90-day oscillation cycle from December 2023 to March 2024. Simon et al. measured the Great Red Spot’s size, shape, brightness, color, and vorticity over one full oscillation cycle. Image credit: NASA /
Jupiter’s Incredible Shrinking Spot
Sign up for the free Nautilus newsletter: science and culture for people who love beautiful writing. Mysteries around Jupiter’s Great Red Spot have been swirling for centuries. No one is sure when the tremendous whirl—the largest and longest-lived storm in our current solar system, with a diameter wider than planet Earth and wind speeds of
Jupiter’s Io Gets a Close-Up
Across the surface of the otherwise-freezing moon, hundreds of volcanoes spew molten lava dozens of miles up, into a thin sulfurous atmosphere. This is the dramatic life of Io, Jupiter’s closest moon. Its ever-changing surface was captured in stunning new high-resolution images on a recent flyby of NASA’s space probe Juno. Humans have known about Io’s
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is whirling faster than ever
The famous Hubble Telescope keeps a watchful eye over many elements of space, including Jupiter and its stormy surface. After more than a decade of collecting data, NASA astronomers have discovered that the gas giant’s most famous storm, the Great Red Spot, is actually picking up wind speed. Planetary scientists used Hubble data to observe…
Winds in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Are Speeding Up
In Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm that has been roiling for centuries, its “outer lane” is moving faster than its “inner lane” — and continues to pick up speed. By analysing long-term data from this high-speed ring, researchers have found that the wind speed has increased by up to 8 percent between 2009 and…