Astronomers have been observing Jupiter’s Great Red Spot,
a massive storm big enough to swallow Earth,
for over 150 years.
However, new discoveries continue to emerge,
especially with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope taking close-up views.
Hubble’s latest observations,
gathered over 90 days from December 2023 to March 2024,
show that the Great Red Spot is less stable than it seems.
The data reveal that the Great Red Spot is wobbling like a bowl of gelatin.
Hubble’s images allowed
astronomers to create a time-lapse movie of the storm’s squiggly motion.
While scientists knew the storm's position changed slightly over time,
they didn’t expect to see its size fluctuate.
Thanks to Hubble’s high resolution,
they found that the Great Red Spot is squeezing in and out while speeding up and slowing down.
Hubble observes Jupiter and the other outer planets yearly through the Outer
Planet Atmospheres Legacy program, or OPAL, but these particular images
were part of a special Great Red Spot study.
The team has been tracking the shrinking Great Red Spot
since the OPAL program began 10 years ago
and predicts it will continue to shrink and eventually
take on a more stable, less-elongated shape.
Researchers hope that future high-resolution
images from Hubble might reveal other clues about what’s causing the storm’s fluctuations.
Studying the biggest storms in our solar system helps scientists understand hurricane
patterns on Earth and could even apply to weather on planets around other stars.
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