NASA's Juno space mission, launched for the purpose of studying the deep atmosphere of Jupiter, the planet's interior and its complex magnetic field, went into orbit in July 2016. Despite the numerous studies conducted on the storm, its nature poses a huge challenge for planetary meteorologists. The Great Red Spot, observed for the first time with certainty 150 years ago, shows up through the telescope owing to its reddish colour against the white, yellowish, ochre clouds contrasting with the rest of the planet. These and other aspects of this phenomenon are the focus of the research that the Juno mission will be conducting over the next few years. They used the images taken by the JunoCam during its close flyby across the Great Red Spot. "These phenomena are confined to a thin layer only 50 km thick, which represents the roof of the clouds of the spot, while inside, the spot probably goes down to a depth of a couple of hundred kilometres," say the researchers. Yet calm reigns at its centre where the clouds move by rotating in the opposite direction at maximum speeds of only 25 km/hour. Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a long-lived, oval-shaped whirlwind measuring 20,000 km, is perhaps one of the most popular atmospheric phenomena in the solar system according to this study, it contains cumulus clouds of clustered storms produced by the condensation of ammonia vapour, narrow gravity waves similar to those that form on the Earth when the wind blows on mountain summits.
The results are published in the Astronomical Journal.
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