I was doing an informal project with some friends, and I *really* wound up with the wrong information about Jupiter and its Red Spot in particular....I believe it is still a *storm* of some sort, let's just put it that way, as it seems like all my other information was wrong. So:
--Roughly speaking, how *big* is the thing?
--How long (according to our best knowledge) has it been going?
--Do we have any idea how much energy the thing has in it? Things like wind-speed, direction of rotation, etc. I realize this can't be precise because of the distances involved, but I'd like to know the *correct* stuff this time (or at least as close to it as we can get, being here).
Thanks for your time! :)
2006-10-26 07:07:26 · 4 answers · asked by Bradley P 7 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
The Great Red Spot storm on Jupiter has been going strong ever since we first observed it on the giant gas planet over 340 years ago. It is located in the southern hemisphere and has wind speeds that reach 270+ mph. The storm is rotating in a counterclockwise motion and has been measured to be aproximately 15,400 miles across. Which would make it almost twice as big as the Earth. I have linked a couple of good sites with info on Jupiter below:
2006-10-26 07:25:23 · answer #1 · answered by Telesto 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Plenty of *accurate information* from wikipedia:
The Great Red Spot is a persistent anticyclonic storm on the planet Jupiter, 22° south of the equator, which has lasted at least 340 years. The storm is large enough to be visible through Earth-based telescopes. It was probably first observed by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who described it around 1665.
This dramatic view of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its surroundings was obtained by Voyager 1 on February 25, 1979, when the spacecraft was 9.2 million km (5.7 million miles) from Jupiter. Cloud details as small as 160 km (100 miles) across can be seen here. The colorful, wavy cloud pattern to the left of the Red Spot is a region of extraordinarily complex and variable wave motion. To give a sense of Jupiter's scale, the white oval storm directly below the Great Red Spot is approximately the same diameter as Earth.
2006-10-26 14:10:00 · answer #2 · answered by F.G. 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The Great Red Spot is 3x the width of the Earth.
2006-10-26 14:10:41 · answer #3 · answered by shadow3771 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It varies from 11,000 to 15,000 miles across. It's been there ever since we had telescopes good enough to see it. It could be thousands of years old as far as we know.
2006-10-26 17:11:22 · answer #4 · answered by Nomadd 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋