Like the speed of an advancing race car driver, the winds in the outermost "lane" of Jupiter's Great Red Spot are accelerating – a discovery only made possible by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has monitored the planet for more than a decade.
Like the speed of an advancing race car driver, the winds in the outermost "lane" of Jupiter's Great Red Spot are accelerating – a discovery only made possible by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has monitored the planet for more than a decade.
Researchers analyzing Hubble's regular "storm reports" found that the average wind speed just within the boundaries of the storm, known as a high-speed ring, has increased by up to 8 percent from 2009 to 2020. In contrast, the winds near the red spot’s innermost region are moving significantly more slowly, like someone cruising lazily on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
The massive storm's crimson-colored clouds spin counterclockwise at speeds that exceed 400 miles per hour – and the vortex is bigger than Earth itself. The red spot is legendary in part because humans have observed it for more than 150 years.
“When I initially saw the results, I asked 'Does this make sense?' No one has ever seen this before," said Michael Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the analysis. "But this is something only Hubble can do. Hubble's longevity and ongoing observations make this revelation possible."
Read more at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Photo Credit: TheSpaceway via Pixabay
