UK scientists get first look at weather inside Jupiter's giant storm system

Jupiter's storms: temperatures and cloud colours
Credit: ESO

New ground-breaking thermal images obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO’s) Very Large Telescope (VLT) and other powerful ground-based telescopes have enabled UK scientists to make the first detailed interior weather map of Jupiter’s giant storm system.

The images which were taken at unprecedented resolution, show swirls of warmer air and cooler regions never seen before within Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, linking its temperature, winds, pressure and composition with its colour.

“This is the first time we can say that there’s an intimate link between environmental conditions - temperature, winds, pressure and composition - and the actual colour of the Great Red Spot,” says University of Oxford scientist, Leigh Fletcher. “Although we can speculate, we still don’t know for sure which chemicals or processes are causing that deep red colour, but we do know now that it is related to changes in the environmental conditions right in the heart of the storm.”

The thermal images were mostly obtained with the VISIR (VLT Imager and Spectrometer for mid Infrared) instrument attached to ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, with additional data coming from the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan’s Subaru Telescope in Hawaii.

Further information is available on the ESO (link opens in a new window) and the University of Oxford (link opens in a new window) websites.