Most recent images from Hubble space telescope show Giant Red Spot
on planet’s atmosphere has continued to shrink and has become more circular



Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, which is actually a massive hurricane characteristic of the planet, has shown it’s still shrinking, with its long axis around 150 miles shorter than it was in 2014. It might seem like a big change, but considering the storm is actually twice as wide as the entire Earth and has been raging for at least 150 years, it’s really rather a minor reduction.

The Great Red Spot’s name is a bit of a misnomer, as the storm is more orange as the intensity reduces and it becomes more circular. That reduction in intensity has allowed Hubble to spot an unusual wispy filament that spans the entire vortex, getting whipped around throughout the ten hours of the space telescope’s span of images in 330 mph winds.



Another curious feature is a wave similar to baroclinic waves that form in Earth’s atmosphere where cyclones form, and is passing through a region populated with cyclones and anti-cyclones. This wave has been spotted only once before.

Hubble will add Neptune and Uranus images to this year’s collection soon, with Saturn appearing a little later.