Pic of the Week: Jupiter’s Changing Spot

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Jupiter’s Great Red Spot captured by the Hubble Space Telescope over a 90 day period. (NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC))

This week’s image is from the NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope. It captures one of the most identifiable objects in our solar system – Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.

Here is a little more from the ESA Hubble site:

Using Hubble Space Telescope data spanning approximately 90 days (between December 2023 and March 2024) when the giant planet Jupiter was approximately 630 million to 820 million kilometres from the Sun, astronomers measured the Great Red Spot’s size, shape, brightness, colour, and vorticity over one full oscillation cycle. The data reveal that the Great Red Spot is not as stable as it might look. It was observed going through an oscillation in its elliptical shape, jiggling like a bowl of gelatin. The cause of the 90-day oscillation is unknown.