By Xinhua,
Beijing : Recent imagery reveals a storm system has changed color in the planet Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere, creating a third “Red Spot” to join the centuries-old Great Red Spot and the 2-year-old Red Spot Jr.
The third reddish storm is west of the Great Red Spot in the same latitude band of clouds and is much smaller.
The new red spot was white, like several other storms whirling nearby on Jupiter. The change to a red color indicated the storm’s clouds were rising to roughly the same altitude as the Great Red Spot’s cloud tops, the Baltimore-based Space Telescope Science Institute said in an image advisory released Thursday.
Astronomers theorize the red storms are so powerful they suck material up from the depths of the Jovian atmosphere to higher altitudes, where ultraviolet radiation from the sun is sparking an as-yet-undetermined chemical reaction that turns the material red.
The color change — and the atmospheric levels of the clouds — were documented in visible-light images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on May 9 and 10, as well as near-infrared data gathered by the W.M. Keck Telescope in Hawaii on May 11. Astronomers determined that all three storms appeared bright in near-infrared light, signaling that they were towering above the methane in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
The latest pictures show that the turbulence and storms first observed on Jupiter more than two years ago are still raging. The Hubble and Keck images also reveal the change from a rather bland, quiescent band surrounding the Great Red Spot just over a year ago to one of incredible turbulence on both sides of the spot.
Red Spot Jr. changed its color in late 2005 and early 2006. The Great Red Spot has persisted for as long as 200 to 350 years, based on early telescopic observations. If the new red spot and the Great Red Spot continue on their courses, they will encounter each other in August, and the small oval will either be absorbed or repelled from the Great Red Spot. Red Spot Jr. which lies between the two other spots, and is at a lower latitude, will pass the Great Red Spot in June.