Seeing Spots!

Tom's Astronomy Blog reports:

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(click image for larger view)

The Hubble Space Telescope is giving the new red spot on Jupiter a good going over. It’s the first time in history the formation of a red spot has been witnessed.

As you can see the Red Spot Jr is about half the size of the Great Red Spot, a storm that has persisted for around 400 years. The origin of Red Spot Jr occurred with the merging of 3 white ovals, a couple of which date back about 90 years. It could be when they merged they began to up-well material from deep in the Jupiter’s atmosphere and then altered by ultraviolet light from the Sun.

Read the rest of the press release on SpaceRef.

A much larger version of the above image can be had by clicking on it.

Credit: SpaceRefImages: NASA, ESA, A. Simon-Miller (Goddard Space Flight Center) and I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley)

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