APOD: Jupiter's Great Red Spot from Voyager 1 (2014 May 18)

[APOD Robot]

Jupiter's Great Red Spot from Voyager 1

Explanation: What will become of Jupiter's Great Red Spot? Recorded as shrinking since the 1930s, the rate of the Great Red Spot's size appears to have accelerated just in the past few years. A hurricane larger than Earth, the Great Red Spot has been raging at least as long as telescopes could see it. Like most astronomical phenomena, the Great Red Spot was neither predicted nor immediately understood after its discovery. Although small eddies that feed into the storm system seem to play a role, a more full understanding of the gigantic storm cloud remains a topic of continued research, and may result in a better understanding of weather here on Earth. The above image is a digital enhancement of an image of Jupiter taken in 1979 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it zoomed by the Solar System's largest planet. NASA's Juno spacecraft is currently heading toward Jupiter and will arrive in 2016.

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[Ann]

Accelerating, accelerating. The expansion of the universe is accelerating. The shrinkage of Jupiter's Great Red Spot is accelerating.

Well, it will be good to have JUNO in orbit around Jupiter to keep watch over the King of the planets busily carrying out his own spot removal.

Ann

[southern cross]

The detail in this image is really amazing - all those swirls and eddys. This has to be on my list of favourite APODs

[Boomer12k]

Someone is watching us....BY JOVE!!!

Such an awesome sight with allot of detail.

:---[===] *

[rghoeing@buffalo.edu]

The Great Eye. Beats the hell out of most modern art! An awe-inspiring storm with awe-inspiring beauty.

[zbvhs]

Are the gasses there still gaseous or are they more like syrup?

[BDanielMayfield]

Are the gasses there still gaseous or are they more like syrup?

Depends how deeply into Jupiter one goes, I would think, but what we see in visible light photos are the tops of clouds. Clouds on Earth are composed mainly of droplets of water and/or ice crystals.

[Psnarf]

Van Gogh "Starry Night"? If you go to the Van Gogh wiki page, there is an image of "Starry Night" 30,000 × 23,756 pixels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van_ ... roject.jpg
Therein you can zoom into the stars and examine how the paint was applied (of interest to artists). They appear a lot like that Great Yellow-orange Spot from V'Ger.
Sea spot. Sea spot run. *ouch!*

I imagine the force of gravity on anything at the surface would render the substance into something more than solid, perhaps a metalic gas? A three-dimensional image would help. Is the vortex sinking clockwise? If so, why is the coriolis effect on Jupiter's southern hemisphere the same as on Earth's? How can the physics be the same with such enormous gravitational forces? We don't know how deep into the planet we would have to go before finding anything like a solid sphere. Judging by the way the pieces of comet Shoemaker-Levy exploded, I'd venture to guess that the surface itself is composed of some sort of solid that moves as if it were molten glass. But then, I'm dumb enough to suggest that any equation describing the gravitational force near the singlularity of a supermassive black hole which contains a 1/0 term is not infinity, but undefined and mathematically incorrect. I'm still trying to grasp the concept of a solid sea spot.

[Chris Peterson]

I imagine the force of gravity on anything at the surface would render the substance into something more than solid, perhaps a metalic gas? A three-dimensional image would help. Is the vortex sinking clockwise? If so, why is the coriolis effect on Jupiter's southern hemisphere the same as on Earth's? How can the physics be the same with such enormous gravitational forces?

The force of gravity is not so large on Jupiter. At its visible surface, it's only about 2.5 times that of Earth. So there's no reason to expect the cloud top dynamics to be radically different from what we see here. Of course, as you descend into the planet, the pressures become very large (just as they do on Earth), so material can exist in somewhat exotic fluid states (again, just as they do on Earth). But what's happening at those depths may have little influence on the surface clouds.

[Psnarf]

It is my understanding that Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen. Its mass is about 317.8 Earths, or 1.8986×1027 kg.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/fa ... rfact.html

The heat and pressure down below creates metallic hydrogen, a kind of slippery fluid similar to mercury, which generates magnetic fields much like metallic hydrogen below the surface of the Sun. We'll have to wait until Juno gets there in a couple of years before we will know anything about the planet's innards via measuring its entire surface gravity from pole to pole. I'm not that familiar with the physical properties of hydrogen, what its Triple Point is and all. The surface features do not move fast enough to suggest gaseous hydrogen, maybe liquid?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO27Wjl8e9c

[Chris Peterson]

It is my understanding that Jupiter is composed mostly of hydrogen. The heat and pressure down below creates metallic hydrogen, a kind of slippery fluid similar to mercury, which generates magnetic fields much like metallic hydrogen below the surface of the Sun. We'll have to wait until Juno gets there in a couple of years before we will know anything about the planet's innards via measuring its entire surface gravity from pole to pole. I'm not that familiar with the physical properties of hydrogen, what its Triple Point is and all. The surface features do not move fast enough to suggest gaseous hydrogen, maybe liquid?

The surface features are all very ordinary gases and clouds at low pressure. What we see are mainly clouds, as gases at this pressure are transparent. What we observe is described by fluid dynamics, not by liquid dynamics (as we are not seeing bulk liquids).

[LocalColor]

The detail in this image is really amazing - all those swirls and eddys. This has to be on my list of favourite APODs

Agreed!

[ta152h0]

good year to have a subscription to National Geographic

[Psnarf]

Boy, is my face red. Can't even read my own references. Although the surface pressure is much greater than 1000 bars (A Jovian walks into a thousand bars...forgot how the rest of it goes.), the surface isn't all that dense, contrariwise I.
Surface Pressure: >>1000 bars
Wind speeds
Up to 150 m/s (<30 degrees latitude)
Up to 40 m/s (>30 degrees latitude)
Apparently we are not looking at the surface, rather high up in the atmosphere where the pressure is less than 1 bar? Below at the surface, hydrogen gas is probably slush.