NASA's Hubble Telescope snaps Jupiter's Great Red Spot

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, has a great Red Spot on it! And the image of the same has been captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Interestingly, the spot is a vast storm, spinning like a cyclone and is also the largest known storm in the solar system. If you compare the size of it with that of Earth, the storm is some 2 times the size of our planet. Informing about the same, Hubble Telescope tweeted, "Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, seen in this #HubbleClassic image from 1999, has captivated astronomers for centuries. The spot is a vast storm, spinning like a cyclone. It’s the largest known storm in our solar system and almost twice the size of Earth."

Notably, the Red Spot is still present in Jupiter's atmosphere, more than 300 years later. "When 17th-century astronomers first turned their telescopes to Jupiter, they noted a conspicuous reddish spot on the giant planet. This Great Red Spot is still present in Jupiter's atmosphere, more than 300 years later. It is now known that it is a vast storm, spinning like a cyclone. Unlike a low-pressure hurricane in the Caribbean Sea, however, the Red Spot rotates in a counterclockwise direction in the southern hemisphere, showing that it is a high-pressure system. Winds inside this Jovian storm reach speeds of about 270 mph," Hubble site informed.

The diameter of the Red Spot is 15,400 miles, which is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.

Explaining the reason behind the long lifetime of the Red Spot, the Hubble site said, "The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers, but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm's energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically."

Notably, astronomers study weather phenomena on other planets in order to gain a greater understanding of our own Ea.rth's climate. Lacking a solid surface, Jupiter provides the astronomers with a laboratory experiment for observing weather phenomena under very different conditions than those prevailing on Earth. This knowledge can also be applied to places in the Earth's atmosphere that are over deep oceans, making them more similar to Jupiter's deep atmosphere.