2-860-679 - Heritage Space/Heritage Images

An ancient storm in the Jovian atmosphere, 1999. The Great Red Spot in Jupiter's atmosphere is a vast storm, spinning like a cyclone. Unlike a low-pressure hurricane in the Caribbean Sea, however, the Red Spot rotates in a counterclockwise direction in the southern hemisphere, showing that it is a high-pressure system. Winds reach speeds of about 270 mph. The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself. The Red Spot changes its shape, size, and color. Such changes are demonstrated in high-resolution Wide Field and Planetary Cameras 1 & 2 images of Jupiter obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble images were originally collected by Amy Simon (Cornell U.), Reta Beebe (NMSU), Heidi Hammel (Space Science Institute, MIT).