- Original Caption Released with Image:
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This amazing color portrait of Jupiter's "Little Red Spot" (LRS) combines
high-resolution images from the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance
Imager (LORRI), taken at 03:12 UT on February 27, 2007, with color images
taken nearly simultaneously by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2)
on the Hubble Space Telescope. The LORRI images provide details as fine as
9 miles across (15 kilometers), which is approximately 10 times better
than Hubble can provide on its own. The improved resolution is possible
because New Horizons was only 1.9 million miles (3 million kilometers)
away from Jupiter when LORRI snapped its pictures, while Hubble was more
than 500 million miles (800 million kilometers) away from the Gas Giant
planet.
The Little Red Spot is the second largest storm on Jupiter, roughly 70%
the size of the Earth, and it started turning red in late-2005. The clouds
in the Little Red Spot rotate counterclockwise, or in the anticyclonic
direction, because it is a high-pressure region. In that sense, the Little
Red Spot is the opposite of a hurricane on Earth, which is a low-pressure
region - and, of course, the Little Red Spot is far larger than any
hurricane on Earth.
Scientists don't know exactly how or why the Little Red Spot turned red,
though they speculate that the change could stem from a surge of exotic
compounds from deep within Jupiter, caused by an intensification of the
storm system. In particular, sulfur-bearing cloud droplets might have been
propelled about 50 kilometers into the upper level of ammonia clouds,
where brighter sunlight bathing the cloud tops released the red-hued
sulfur embedded in the droplets, causing the storm to turn red. A similar
mechanism has been proposed for the Little Red Spot's "older brother," the
Great Red Spot, a massive energetic storm system that has persisted for
over a century.
New Horizons is providing an opportunity to examine an "infant" red storm
system in detail, which may help scientists understand better how these
giant weather patterns form and evolve.
- Image Credit:
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NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest
Research Institute
Image Addition Date:
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2007-05-01
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