Is Jupiter’s iconic Red Spot the same one that Cassini observed in the 1600s?

bthylafh

Ars Legatus Legionis
16,212
Subscriptor++
Not a likely scenario, but the idea that there is no ground on Jupiter on which to stand, and you would just keep falling until the eventual pressure and heat would kill you, is intensely terrifying.
If it's any comfort you'd asphyxiate long before you are crushed and/or broiled.
 
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What coincidence?

Earth has cyclonic storms forming in almost identical places, not to mention latitudes, all the time. I don't see why the same would be THAT different on other planets.
Under either theory, Jupiter is super different from Earth.

As you say, Earth develops these storms all the time. We have hurricanes and typhoons starting at different places going in different directions. Multiple times a year. Occasionally, we have several happening at the same time.

Jupiter only has one.

Either it was a unicorn event that created one perpetual storm, or these storms happen all the time, but only ever one at a time, and sometimes not at all for a century. Either way, that's super different from Earth.
 
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Not a likely scenario, but the idea that there is no ground on Jupiter on which to stand, and you would just keep falling until the eventual pressure and heat would kill you, is intensely terrifying.
I can't say it's ever kept me up at night. Unless I was doing a telescope viewing, that is.
 
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Did everybody forget about Oval BA? Surprised it hasn't come up in the article or the comments. We saw three smaller storms coalesce into one larger storm in 2000 and then turn red in 2006. I am not an astronomer but that, to me, suggests that red spots on Jupiter may be a recurring thing and not necessarily something that never goes away. I also read somewhere that there was another even smaller red spot that got torn apart by the GRS (if I'm remembering correctly).
 
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I argue that Heraclitus had some insights on this question:

He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being". He expressed this in sayings like "Everything flows" (Greek: πάντα ρει, panta rhei) and "No man ever steps in the same river twice"

 
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I'm no engineer, but would that even be viable? The gravity of Jupiter likely would not be a problem for aligning the data transfer to Earth, but the moment the satellite hit those winds any data transfer couldn't happen.
Omnidirectional antenna on the probe, high sensitivity receiver on the orbiter capturing and relaying the data. If you design the probe for the explicit purpose of the dive, you can do it. The Cassini probe death dive mentioned by another respondent wasn't equipped for omni broadcast.

Omni uses more power versus a directional dish which is why we don't use it commonly for probe communications.
 
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katie3anderson

Smack-Fu Master, in training
74
So tax payer money was spent to have some university people examine something that is pretty much irrelevant. People who went to work in the private sector, who paid their taxes only to see this is what their money was spent on: "It's probably not the same spot."

There's not even a definitive answer, it's just a guess. "Probably not." You could put 3 ping pong balls labeled "It's the same spot", "It's not the same spot" and "It's probably not the same spot" in a box and have someone - blindfolded - pick one. The outcome would be exactly the same.

Isn't it time we stopped spending money on this nonsense? I mean, come on.
This is the thing you decided was important enough to create an account and say? A complaint about a group of astronomers from Bilbao using a grant from the Basque government to research the dynamics of Jupiter's atmosphere?

(Sorry, I know I shouldn't feed the trolls...)
 
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To paraphrase the authors: we're not sure how it formed and not sure what sustains it, but we wrote some modeling code that says it went away and came back so we're pretty sure it's not the same spot.
On top of that, the composition of the Spot seems value as well and that surprises me. We xcan look into the far distance realms of space and determined thr atmospheric compsition of a planet, even to the point to answer is there organic life there, but a planet in our own system and we can't stated "The Spot is composed of X, Y, Z atoms/molecules whatever".

I find this:

The source of its reddish color has not yet been established, but it varies throughout the region.

and this:

The chemical composition of Jupiter is complex, but among the many possible combinations, chemicals like acetylene and ammonia are thought to be the main drivers making up the Great Red Spot's visible layer, or chromophore

and this:

The ruddy color of Jupiter's Great Red Spot is likely a product of simple chemicals being broken apart by sunlight in the planet's upper atmosphere, according to a new analysis of data from NASA's Cassini mission.

Likey, many possible combinations, not yet established....sigh....So much to explore, tough choices with limited funds. It is like Venus, It is as if humanity is intentionally ignoring a planet next to us in favor of looking at dwarf planet millions if not billions of milers away.

As a tax payer, I would rather my money spent on a scientific mission to Venus (or to the Red Spot) then an xx billion dollar aircraft carrier that these days has a short life span in a shooting war or multi-million dollar aircraft that do next to nothing in an urban war.
 
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Maybe. I'm just inclined to doubt that the Red Spot of today is a different or new phenomenon from the 'Permanent Spot', as the study attests, while it could be the same phenomenon having variable behavior over time. The claim that the Permanent Spot 'disappears from the astronomical record' is rather vague and I'd like to see published accounts of observations from that time period. Was it noted among the astronomical community and discussed? The article is a little lacking on that time period. Just my two cents.
There wouldn't have been much to discuss back then. The nature of Jupiter wasn't yet understood, so regarding the Great Red Spot, all they could do is note when they observed it, and how it looked.

We only found out for sure what the Great Red Spot was when the Voyager probes flew by Jupiter and took pictures from up close. It had already been suspected that the Spot was a cyclone, but those sharp pictures of the Spot and the eddies swirling around it, they proved it beyond any doubt. I was 14 at the time and I remember it being quite exciting!
 
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On top of that, the composition of the Spot seems value as well and that surprises me. We xcan look into the far distance realms of space and determined thr atmospheric compsition of a planet, even to the point to answer is there organic life there, but a planet in our own system and we can't stated "The Spot is composed of X, Y, Z atoms/molecules whatever".

I find this:



and this:



and this:



Likey, many possible combinations, not yet established....sigh....So much to explore, tough choices with limited funds. It is like Venus, It is as if humanity is intentionally ignoring a planet next to us in favor of looking at dwarf planet millions if not billions of milers away.

As a tax payer, I would rather my money spent on a scientific mission to Venus (or to the Red Spot) then an xx billion dollar aircraft carrier that these days has a short life span in a shooting war or multi-million dollar aircraft that do next to nothing in an urban war.


There's a perfectly good reason why we can determine atmospheric composition of extrasolar planets from telescope observations but cannot do so for planets in our own solar system: spectroscopy relies on observing the light from the planet's home star as the planet transits in front of it. We're on the wrong side of Jupiter's orbit for that to begin with, and our proximity to our star almost certainly adds a bunch of additional problems. Any reports of organic life based on spectroscopy are speculation or conjecture at best, so I wouldn't take that stuff too seriously.

I agree that it would be nice if, as a species, we diverted more of our resources away from killing one another and toward furthering our understanding of our universal neighborhood, but I've met humans; it ain't gonna happen.
 
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So if Jupiter is ever as big in our sky as in image “a”, we’re definitely going to die in a couple years, right? I’ve never seen it as being big enough to be confused for the moon before.

This reminds me of a question I've had bouncing around in the back of my head for ages: are any of those video game skyboxes dominated by a large planet that occupies a quarter of the sky or more physically possible? In any of the flybys of Jovian and Saturnine moons, the gas giants are big but nowhere close to sky-filling. If you're close enough to another planetary body that it can loom enormous, are you too close to maintain a stable orbit?
 
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Under either theory, Jupiter is super different from Earth.

As you say, Earth develops these storms all the time. We have hurricanes and typhoons starting at different places going in different directions. Multiple times a year. Occasionally, we have several happening at the same time.

Jupiter only has one.

Either it was a unicorn event that created one perpetual storm, or these storms happen all the time, but only ever one at a time, and sometimes not at all for a century. Either way, that's super different from Earth.
What makes you say that Jupiter only has one storm? The Big Red Spot is certanly the largest but there's at least a dozen more. Three white storms were recorded to have formed in the 1940s and then merged some time in the year 2000 before turning red and becoming known as the Little Red Spot.
 
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The dissipation of the Great Red Spot is clearly caused by anthropogenic global warming, which is radiating heat out into the entire solar system. The only way to save this natural treasure for future generations is to buy more luxury electric SUVs. And all that third row seating would incidentally solve the housing crisis as well.
 
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DaveSimmons

Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
9,503
Very cool. Are there careful drawings and observations without the spot? or were those always handwaved off and dismissed as being inaccurate?
That would make a nice update or expansion to this article. The article has a nice collection of drawings of the spot(s) going back to 1711 (pretty cool in itself) but nothing from the possible in-between period.
 
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What coincidence?

Earth has cyclonic storms forming in almost identical places, not to mention latitudes, all the time. I don't see why the same would be THAT different on other planets. Little is known about the core of Jupiter, and how it may impact "weather patterns" in its atmosphere, but one would think that if it remains generally the same (over millions of years) then the storm patterns would remain much the same as well.

Storms on Earth do die off if energy is no longer being put into them (eg cold water/land vs warm water). It may be that the spot simply has cycles of growth and shrinkage.

The upshot is that it's very possible the spot went away and then came back, much like tropical storms do on Earth. Only there are likely more variables involved with maintaining storms on Earth than there are on Jupiter (and certainly different ones as well). That's why they last so long.

But it coming and going, or just staying where it is, in the same latitude isn't a surprise at all to me. I don't think the assertion supporting the statement that it's the same storm is entirely accurate. But if there's going to be a big red spot on Jupiter, it will probably be where the other ones have been in the past. Just like where most tropical storms form on Earth.
i believe Bolton said this in context of the timeframe that this storm persist and the absence of occurrences of similar phenomena in other parts of Jupiter. it would be interesting if someone tried to find correlation between placement of the spot and Jupiter features that are underneath the easily observable cloud surface. the uniqueness of the spot would require some uniqueness of such features otherwise we would observe similar spots appear in other areas as well.
 
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moongoddess

Seniorius Lurkius
24
Subscriptor++
as additional context to the article, if i'm not mistaken, early depictions of jupiter with the red spot put it on the "upper half" of jupiter because telescopes flipped the vertical orientation of planets. so the modern imagery of jupiter used in the comparisons are also flipped for ease of direct comparison in the article pictures.
Refractors used without a star diagonal give an upside down image (and not just of planets, but of everything!). Newtonian reflectors mirror-reverse the image, or rotate the image (depending on the angle at which the focuser is located). Refractors using a 90-degree star diagonal give an image that is right-side up but mirror-reversed. A refractor using a 45-degree correct image diagonal (usually used for birding, not astronomy, because they dim the image too much) give an image that is correctly oriented in all directions (right-side up, left is left, right is right), just like binoculars do.

So where you see the Red Spot (or the major features on the Moon) depends on exactly what telescope setup you are using!
 
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