The Hubble Telescope captures Jupiter’s Great Red Spot shrinking like a stress ball

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New observations of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show that the 190-year-old storm is shaking like gelatin and changing shape like a compressed stress ball.

The unexpected observations, taken by Hubble over 90 days from December to March, show that the Great Red Spot is not as stable as it appears, according to astronomers.

The Great Red Spot, or GRS, is an anticyclone, or large circulation of winds, in Jupiter’s atmosphere that orbits around a central area of ​​high pressure along a belt of clouds at the planet’s mid-southern latitudes. The long-lasting storm is so massive — the largest in the solar system — that Earth could fit inside it.

Although storms are generally considered unstable, the Great Red Spot has persisted for nearly two centuries. But the noticeable changes in the storm appear to be related to its movement and size.

Time-lapse images show the vortex “vibrating” like gelatin, expanding and contracting over time.

The researchers described the observation in an analysis published in Planetary Science Journal It was presented Wednesday at the 56th annual meeting of American Astronomical Society Section of Planetary Science (Boise, Idaho).

“Although we know that its motion varies slightly in longitude, we did not expect to see the magnitude fluctuate as well. “Although we know that its motion varies slightly in longitude, we did not expect to see the magnitude fluctuate as well,” lead study author Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement. “To our knowledge, he has never been identified.”

“This is the first time we’ve gotten the shooting rhythm right for GRS,” Simon said. “Thanks to Hubble’s high resolution, we can say that the GRS is categorically pressing in and out at the same time as moving faster and slower. This was very unexpected.”

Astronomers have observed the famous crimson feature for at least 150 years, and sometimes, observations lead to surprises, including the recent revelation that the storm’s oval shape can change its dimensions and appear thinner or fatter at times.

Recently, a separate team of astronomers looked into the heart of the Great Red Spot using the James Webb Space Telescope to capture new details in infrared light. Hubble’s observations were made in visible and ultraviolet light.

The study was published on September 27 in Journal of Geophysical Research: PlanetsHe revealed that the Great Red Spot is cold in the center, causing ammonia and water to condense inside the vortex and form dense clouds. The research team also detected phosphine gas within the storm, which could play “a role in generating those mysterious red colors” that make the Great Red Spot so distinctive, said study co-author Lee Fletcher, a professor of planetary science at the UK university. Leicester City in a statement.

NASA scientists use Hubble’s sharp eye to track storm behavior once a year through the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy, or OPAL, program, which Simon leads. Scientists use this software to observe the exoplanets in our solar system and observe how they change over time.

But the new observations were taken separately by a program dedicated to studying the Great Red Spot in more detail by monitoring how the storm changes over months, rather than in a single annual snapshot.

“To the untrained eye, Jupiter’s striped clouds and its famous red storm may appear stationary, stable and long-lasting over many years,” Fletcher said. “But closer inspection shows incredible variability, with chaotic climate patterns as complex as anything we have here on Earth. Planetary scientists have striven for years to see patterns in this variation, anything that might give us the ability to grapple with the physics underpinning this complex system.”

Fletcher was not involved in the new study.

Insights gathered through the program’s observations of the largest storms in our solar system could help scientists understand what the weather might be like on exoplanets orbiting other stars. This knowledge can expand their understanding of meteorological processes beyond the processes we witness on Earth.

Simon’s team used high-resolution Hubble images to get a detailed look at the size, shape and color changes of the Great Red Spot.

“When we look closely, we see that a lot of things change from day to day,” Simon said.

The changes included the brightness of the storm’s core when the Great Red Spot is at its largest as it oscillates.

“As it accelerates and decelerates, the GRS is pressing against the stormy jet streams to its north and south,” study co-author Mike Wong, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a statement. “It’s similar to a sandwich where the slices of bread are forced to swell when there is too much filling in the middle.”

Dark spots on Neptune can drift across the planet, as there are no strong jet streams holding them in place, while the Great Red Spot is trapped between jet streams at Jupiter’s southern latitude, Wong said.

Astronomers have observed the Great Red Spot shrinking since the OPAL program began a decade ago, and they expect it will continue to shrink until it reaches a stable, less elongated shape, which could reduce the oscillation.

“Now it’s overfilling Latitude range in relation to the wind field. “Once it shrinks within that range, the wind will hold it in place,” Simon said.

Fletcher said the new Hubble study fills in more pieces of the puzzle about the Great Red Spot. While scientists know the storm’s westward drift has an unexplained 90-day oscillation, the accelerating and decelerating pattern does not appear to be changing even though the storm is shrinking, he said.

“By observing the GRS over a period of a few months, Hubble showed that the anticyclone itself changes shape with this oscillation,” Fletcher said. “The shape change is important, because it may affect how the edge of the vortex interacts with other passing storms. Combined with Hubble’s amazing images, this study shows the power of observing atmospheric systems over long periods of time. You need this kind of observation to detect these patterns Obviously, the longer you watch, the more organization you see in the chaotic weather.