Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2016

SPACE CHRONICLES tions. These maps make it possible to determine the speed of Jupiter’s winds, to identify different phe- nomena in its atmosphere and to track changes in its most famous features. The new images confirm that the huge storm which has raged on Jupiter’s surface for at least three hundred years contin- ues to shrink, but that it may not go out without a fight. The storm, known as the Great Red Spot, is seen here swirling at the centre of the image of the planet. It has been S cientists using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have produced new maps of Jupiter that show the continuing changes in its famous Great Red Spot. The images also reveal a rare wave struc- ture in the planet’s atmosphere that has not been seen for decades. The new image is the first in a se- ries of annual portraits of the Solar System’s outer planets, which will give us new glimpses of these re- mote worlds, and help scientists to study how they change over time. In this new image of Jupiter a broad range of features have been captured, including winds, clouds and storms. The scientists behind the new images took pictures of Jupiter using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 over a ten-hour period and have produced two maps of the entire planet from the observa- Hubble’s planetary portrait captures changes in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot by NASA T his new image from the largest planet in the Solar System, Jupiter, was made during the Outer Planet At- mospheres Legacy (OPAL) programme. The images from this programme make it possible to determine the speeds of Jupiter’s winds, to identify different phenomena in its atmosphere and to track changes in its most famous features. [NASA, ESA, A. Simon (GSFC), M. Wong (UC Berkeley), and G. Orton (JPL-Caltech)]