Scientists find second Great Spot on Jupiter

Scientists have found second Great Spot in Jupiter which is cold and high up. The Great Spot was found to be 24,000 km across and 12,000 km wide. It is found to be in the upper atmosphere and is much cooler than the hot surroundings. Unlike the Great Red Spot which was identified in 1830, this newly discovered Great Spot is continuously changing its shape and size.
The Great Cold Spot is believed to be caused by magnetic forces responsible for Jupiter’s polar auroras. This phenomenon drives energy into the atmosphere and creates a region of cooling in the boundary layer between the underlying atmosphere and the vacuum of space.
The Great Spot was discovered by a British-led team using a telescope in the Southern Observatory in northern Chile. It was found to be much more volatile than the slowly changing Great Red Spot and found to be thousands of years old. Scientists have planned to study the Great Cold Spot using ground telescopes and NASA’s Juno spacecraft that is orbiting around Jupiter. The study has been published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Month: Current Affairs - April, 2017