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Jupiter’s birthmark is an incredibly large storm of mysterious deep red color. It looks like a bloody Cyclops eye looking down at the Earth. The anticyclone moves through
Jupiter’s birthmark is an incredibly large storm of mysterious deep red color. It looks like a bloody Cyclops eye looking down at the Earth. The anticyclone moves through the southern mid-latitude cloud belt and persists in Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere for at least 150 years. Amazingly, the Great Red Spot (GRS) is large enough to engulf our entire planet, making it the largest storm in the Solar System.
Astronomers need Hubble’s sharp view to follow the behavior of the GRS, like a meteorologist watching a swirling hurricane. This only happens once a year as part of the Exoplanet Atmospheric Heritage (OPAL) program, but the new program allowed Hubble to capture eight images of the site over a 90-day period. And there are always new surprises.
A collection of Hubble images shows that during the 90 days between December 2023 and March 2024, the GRS was not as stable as it seemed. Its elliptical shape can change its size; It looks like a slightly thinner or thicker red oval. This change in form is unexpected and inexplicable. But in hindsight, this may not be a complete surprise, given that Jupiter’s atmosphere is constantly changing due to dynamic winds. It’s like trying to predict the exact motion of the swirl of cream poured into a cup of coffee. Does meteorology on giant planets around other stars have their own major storms? Hubble’s detailed examination of Jupiter may provide new clues.
Astronomers have observed Jupiter’s fabled Great Red Spot (GRS), an anticyclone large enough to swallow the Earth, for more than 150 years. Despite all this, this place continues to reveal new surprises, especially when observed closely by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.
Recent Hubble observations, conducted over a 90-day period from December 2023 to March 2024, showed that the GRS is not as stable as previously thought. The data show that GRS is released like a bowl of gelatin. These observations allowed astronomers to collect a time-lapse video showing the unstable behavior of the GRS.
This time-lapse video was compiled from observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope during approximately 90 days (from December 2023 to March 2024) when the giant planet Jupiter was between 391 million and 512 million miles from the Sun.
“Although we knew that its motion varied somewhat in longitude, we did not expect to see a change in size either. To our knowledge, it had not been identified before,” said Amy Simon of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Planetary Science Journal. “This is actually the first time we’ve had the correct imaging frequency of GRS. Thanks to Hubble’s high resolution, we can tell that the GRS is moving faster and faster while eventually shrinking and disappearing. “This was very unexpected and there is no hydrodynamic explanation at this time.”
Hubble observes Jupiter and the Solar System’s other outer planets every year through the Outer Planet Atmosphere Legacy (OPAL) program that Simon leads, but these observations came from a program dedicated to GRS. Understanding the mechanisms of the largest storms in the Solar System places tornado theory on Earth in a broader cosmic context that can be applied to better understand meteorology on planets around other stars.
Using Hubble, Simon’s team zoomed in on the GRS to examine its size, shape, and subtle color changes in detail. “When we look closer, we see that many things are changing every day,” Simon said. This includes observations in ultraviolet light that show that the clear core of the storm is brightest when the GRS is largest in its oscillation cycle. This indicates less absorption of fog in the upper atmosphere.
“As the GRS speeds up and slows down, it pushes the windy jet streams north and south,” said Mike Wong, one of the researchers from the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s like a sandwich where the bread slices swell when the middle is stuffed with too much filling.” Wong compared this to Neptune, where dark spots can drift wildly across latitude without strong jet streams to hold them in place. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot was sandwiched between jet streams at southern latitude for coverage of Earth-based telescopic observations.
The team has continued to observe a decline in GRS since the OPAL program began 10 years ago. They predict it will continue to narrow before settling into a stable, less elongated shape. “Right now it’s exceeding the latitude band based on the wind field. Once it gets stuck within that band the winds will really hold it in place,” Simon said. The team predicts that the size of the GRS will likely stabilize, but so far Hubble has only observed it for one cycle of oscillation.
Researchers hope that in the future, other high-resolution images obtained by Hubble may identify other parameters of Jupiter that point to the underlying cause of the oscillations. The results will be presented at the 56th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society Planetary Sciences Division in Boise, Idaho.
Source: Port Altele
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