OneWingedBird
Beloved of Ra
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Best view ever of Jupiter's Great Red Spot coming up in the next week:
Bad Astronomy
On July 10/11, 2017, the Juno spacecraft will once again dip down over Jupiter’s cloud tops, screaming past the planet at over 200,000 kilometers per hour. It’s done this before, six times in fact, but this one will be different: It’ll pass directly over the Great Red Spot.
That’s a big deal. Literally! The iconic Great Red Spot is a vast storm in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere. Besides the wide belts and zones (darker and lighter stripes parallel to the planet’s equator), the Red Spot is the most obvious feature in Jupiter’s clouds. That’s because of its color (which varies from salmon pink to deep red over time), but also because of its ridiculously huge size: It spans 16,000 kilometers east to west. That’s wider than our entire planet Earth!
Bad Astronomy