NASA’s Hubble Telescope captured spectacular new images of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus.
The sharp view of NASA’s Hubble Telescope gives us a close-up of the knots of caramel-colored clouds and storms visible on the face of Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system.
Every year, the Hubble telescope goes on a visual “grand tour” of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
NASA designates this program Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy, whose purpose is to give a kind of cosmic climate report to planetary scientists and astronomers.
On November 18, NASA released photos from this year’s grand tour. The gallery of portraits of the planets, with their active stripes, ethereal rings, giant storms and raging winds.
NASA continues its investigations
The space agency hopes the results will help scientists understand the dynamics of gas giant planets, both in our own solar system and in other stars, and help them understand a little better how Earth’s atmosphere works.
The most prominent feature of Jupiter’s cloud cover is the Great Red Spot, an anticyclone larger than Earth that has been rotating for more than 150 years, at speeds of around 640 kilometers per hour.
The new observations show that the winds at the center of the storm continue to lose speed, while those at the outer edge are accelerating.
The stain has changed shape, from oval to circle, in addition to new storms to the south.
Saturn has a mysterious hurricane
In Saturn’s northern hemisphere, it was early autumn when the Hubble telescope made its observation this year of the ringed planet.
A mysterious six-sided hurricane reappeared around the planet’s north pole.
The Voyager space probe first detected this storm, large enough to engulf four planets like ours, in the early 1980s.
Last year it could hardly be seen, but this year it has reappeared.