eso1010 - 2010 March 16
Scientists Get First Look at Weather Inside the Solar System’s Biggest Storm
New ground-breaking thermal images obtained with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and other powerful ground-based telescopes show swirls of warmer air and cooler regions never seen before within Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, enabling scientists to make the first detailed interior weather map of the giant storm system linking its temperature, winds, pressure and composition with its colour.
Jupiter’s Storms: Temperatures and Cloud Colours
(Credit: NASA/JPL/ESO and NASA/ESA/GSFC)
See Spot on Jupiter. See Spot Glow.
NASA JPL 2010-086 - 2010 March 16
Thermal Structure and Composition of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot from High-Resolution Thermal ImagingThe observations reveal that the reddest color of the Great Red Spot corresponds to a warm core within the otherwise cold storm system, and images show dark lanes at the edge of the storm where gases are descending into the deeper regions of the planet. These types of data, detailed in a paper appearing in the journal Icarus, give scientists a sense of the circulation patterns within the solar system's best-known storm system.
- Preprint submitted to Icarus February 1, 2010