The Great Red Sunburn

Jupiter has one of the largest planetary atmospheres in the solar system, with three atmosphere layers made up of ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide and water clouds at different altitudes.   As chaotic and beautiful Jupiter's atmosphere is, the great red spot out-shines them all.

The Great Red Spot is a vortex the size of three Earths.  Researchers have been theorising for hundreds of years as to the cause of the Great Red Spot's color. Up until recently it was thought that the color was some kind of red phosphorus or sulfur compound rising from beneath Jupiter's clouds.

Scientists at Nasa's JPL have been studying data gained from Nasa's Cassini spacecraft, which flew by Jupiter in December 2000 on its way to Saturn and its moons.  They also conducted laboratory experiments  by blasting ammonia and acetylene gases (chemicals known to exist in Jupiter's atmosphere) with ultraviolet light, in order to simulate how the sun affects these chemicals.  The experiment produced a reddish material that matched a model of the Great Red Spot where the red-colored material had been confined to the uppermost reaches of the vortex.

"Our models suggest most of the Great Red Spot is actually pretty bland in color, beneath the upper cloud layer of reddish material," said Kevin Baines, a Cassini team scientist from JPL. "Under the reddish 'sunburn' the clouds are probably whitish or greyish."

Read more in the article on International Business Time site

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Shrinking

Space.com is reporting that Jupiter's great red spot appears to be shrinking!  This observation is based on photos taken by the Hubble space telescope since the early 90s, as well as observations from amateur astronomers.

While the storm has been observations from  the late 1800s estimated  the spot at 25,500 miles across.  A century later, the Voyager spacecraft flybys  in 1979 revealed the spot had shrunk to 14,500 miles.


Images from Hubble showed in images taken in 1995, the storm shrinking to 13,020 miles across. By 2009, the Red Spot had diminished to 11,130 miles.

Read the complete Space.com article HERE

Jupiter Grows Third Red Spot

Shaun sends in a fascinating article from Foxnews concerning curious weather manifestations on Jupiter. Its' well known Red Spot has had a smaller companion that was first observed in 2006.
The Little Red Spot, as it was named, shows both size and speed in threatening to knock the former champion off its perch, with Junior's maximum winds reaching 384 mph.

Now Little Red has been joined by a "smaller" companion. What is even more curious is the newer storms are not quite what they seem.

Thermal heat images showed that the Little Red Spot may already match the Great Red Spot for size, although the latter still appears almost twice as large on the surface of Jupiter's atmosphere when examined in visible light. Little Red Spot appears to be part of an interacting system that is actually larger than the Great Red Spot. The Little Red Spot has steadily gained strength even as the Big Red Spot shrinks. Astronomers remain mystified by the angry red color of the storms. The Little Red Spot only changed color in late 2005 after it formed from earlier mergers of three smaller storms. The newest third red spot began as an oval white storm.

Some have speculated that the increase in activity indicates that Jupiter is experiencing a warming trend and the additional energy may be causing more and more violent storms.