Pictures of Jupiter made by the Hubble Space Telescope, show changes in the Great Red Spot

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope opportunities, created a new map of the surface of Jupiter, which perfectly demonstrates the changes that have undergone the Great Red Spot. The images also show a rare wave-like structure of the atmosphere of Jupiter, which is not seen in decades. The new image - the first of a series of "portraits" of the planets of the solar system, compiled annually. Such images help to see the changes and scientists actively using them to study such changes.

On the "map" of Jupiter are clearly visible clouds, storms and winds manifestations. For these images, specialists used Wide Field Camera 3 Hubble Space Telescope, which resulted in just two cards created the whole planet. These maps help to determine the speed of the winds of Jupiter, to discover new phenomena in the atmosphere of the gas giant and track changes.

Through photos it becomes clear that a huge storm raging on Jupiter for at least three hundred years, continues to decline. The storm known as the Great Red Spot, and it can be clearly seen on almost any photos of Jupiter. Over time, he declined, but now the decline in the size of the object has slowed now diameter "spot" just 240 km less than in 2014.




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Changing the size of the spot - not only change recorded by Hubble. At the center of the spot, which, incidentally, is not a rich color, can be seen an unusual object - a misty "fiber", passing through all these atmospheric formation. By the way, the wind speed is reached 540 kilometers per hour.

There is another interesting object for study. So, in the north of the equator of the planet, the researchers found a huge wavy structure, similar to objects found in 1977 (this structure Voyager 2 photographed during a flyby of the planet). Most scientists do not like anything seen to date. Photos of Voyager 2 in this case were not very good quality, and experts believe that this is just an artifact of the image, but it turned out that this is a real phenomenon.

Now there is speculation that it baroclinic wave, something like that exists in the Earth's atmosphere, appearing in the formation of cyclones.

Observations of Jupiter carried out in the framework of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL).

Source: geektimes.ru/post/263914/