Inside the Great Red Spot

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Revealed — Enhanced image by Kevin M. Gill (CC-BY) based on images provided courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS
Processed image. Kevin M. Gill’s enhanced-colour treatment of JunoCam data captured on 10 July 2017 (PDT) during the seventh close flyby, about 9,866 kilometres above the cloud tops. Its visible texture belongs to a processed cloud-top view, not a direct measurement of the storm’s depth.
Creative Commons Attribution (version not specified by source) · resized to WebP
· Original image source · Image licence

Public image processing brings a giant storm’s smaller structures into view.

World: Jupiter
Case date or period: Observations · 1979–2018

Look closer

Kevin M. Gill used publicly released JunoCam data to make the enhanced-colour close view. The visible swirls and wisps give the familiar oval a complex internal landscape.

Follow the evidence

Compare Juno’s close view with two 1979 Voyager observations and Gill’s treatment of a nearby disturbance. These observations come from different encounters; colour processing, camera scale and viewpoint must be considered before claiming a physical change.

Built by people looking closely

The credited image processors worked with publicly available mission observations. Their versions are part of this collection, with each person’s processing and licence retained. Compare the treatments and return to the underlying source when a small detail matters.

Depth comes from more than cloud colour

Scott Bolton’s team used Juno’s microwave radiometer to probe below the visible clouds. Marzia Parisi’s gravity-overflight analysis added measurements of tiny spacecraft velocity changes near the Great Red Spot, constraining the storm’s depth to roughly five hundred kilometres. The two methods complement one another. Gill’s cloud-top photographs make the vortex visible, but its deep extent comes from instrument measurements and modelling, rather than an apparent thickness read from enhanced colour.

A disturbance watched from Earth and Juno

John Rogers’ April 2018 report compared amateur telescope observations with Perijove 12 images processed by Gerald Eichstädt and others. A pale feature near the Great Red Spot that looked oval from Earth resolved into an irregular region among streaks and eddies in JunoCam views. Rogers also identified turbulent material sweeping around the storm and an eddy drawing orange streamers from it. Different observing scales changed the interpretation; the report’s awaited animations were not completed motion measurements.