Jupiter's Great Red Spot Continues to Shrink

Posted on May 15, 2014

Jupiter's Great Red Spot continues to shrink. It has shrunk to its smallest size ever measured. The spot, which is actually a giant swirling anticyclonic storm, is still larger than Earth. The Great Red Spot is now about 10,250 miles across according to Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Astronomers used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to measure the spot.

Here are some previous measurements of the Great Red Spot:

Historic observations as far back as the late 1800s estimated the storm to be as large as 25,500 miles on its long axis
NASA Voyager 1 and Voyager measured the spot as 14,500 miles across in 1979
A Hubble photo indicated the long axis of the spot at 13,020 miles across in 1995
The spot was measured at 11,130 miles across in 2009

Simon says in a statement, "In our new observations it is apparent very small eddies are feeding into the storm. We hypothesized these may be responsible for the accelerated change by altering the internal dynamics and energy of the Great Red Spot."

SPACE