Hubble space telescope, NASA’s most powerful telescope, discovered a mysterious change in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. The spot is a furious 10,000-mile-wide cyclone that is big enough to gulp Earth.
The spot has been dwindling and becoming more circular since the astronomers began perceiving it about 150 years ago.
Terrestrial researchers Amy Simon and Michael Wong scrutinized the decade’s data of Hubble Telescope on the Great Red Spot’s wind speed, which surpass 400 miles per hour.
NASA stated that their exploration recommends the cyclone’s outer band is speeding up. Its wind speeds increased up to 8% from 2009 to 2020. Contradictory to this, its inner region has expressively slowed down.
Michael Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, said “When I initially saw the results, I asked ‘Does this make sense?’ No one has ever seen this before,”. “But this is something only Hubble can do. Hubble’s longevity and ongoing observations make this revelation possible.”
The change in the wind speed the researchers have measured with the Hubble amounts to less than 1.6 miles per hour per Earth year.
The researchers use Earth-orbiting satellites and airplanes to track major storms on Earth in real-time. Amy Simon of NASA said that as we don’t have storm chaser planes o Jupiter, that’s why we can’t measure the winds on-site.
Amy Simon further added that Hubble is the only telescope that has the temporal coverage and spatial resolution that can capture Jupiter’s winds in this detail.
Hubble space telescope’s continuing observation lets the scientist reexamine and evaluate its data very pretentiously as they keep adding to it. The slightest geographies Hubble can disclose in the storm are a mere 105 miles across.
