Everyone knows about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a centuries old storm that can fit about ten Earths in it. But there are two other “red spots” over there as well. The latest discovery, about half the size of Earth, is in the same neighbourhood.
Courtesy of NewScientistSpace.com:
Now, a third red spot, about half the size of Red Spot Junior, has broken out on the giant gaseous planet. The spot, previously a white storm, now appears red in Hubble Space Telescope images taken on 9 and 10 May. The observations were led by Imke de Pater of the University of California, Berkeley, US.
No one knows for sure what gives the three spots their red colour. But one theory is that especially violent storms dredge up material from deeper in Jupiter’s atmosphere, such as phosphorus-containing molecules, which undergo chemical reactions that turn them red when exposed to sunlight.
