Jupiter (Planet) -- Photographs from space; Jupiter probes; Voyager Project
The most visible cloud interactions take place in the region of the
Great Red Spot. Material within the Red Spot rotates about once every
six days. Infrared measurements show that the Red Spot is a region of
atmospheric upwelling, which extends to very high altitudes; however,
the divergent flow suggested by this upwelling seems to be very
small—one bright feature was observed to circle the Red Spot for sixty
days without appreciably changing its distance from the spot’s center.
During the Voyager 1 flyby, spots were seen to move toward the Red Spot
from the east, flow along its northern border, then either flow on to
the west past the Red Spot or into the outer regions of its vortex. A
spot caught on the outer edge of the Red Spot flow might break in two as
it reached the eastern edge of the spot, with one piece remaining in the
vortex and the other moving off to the east. Alternatively, a spot
floating toward the Red Spot from the east might be pushed northward to
join the eastward current flowing north of the giant red oval.
By the time of the second Voyager encounter, a ribbon of white clouds
curled around the northern border of the Red Spot, blocking the motion
of small spots that might otherwise have been caught up in the vortex.
Spots approaching the Red Spot from the east just turned around and
headed back in the direction from which they had come.
[Illustration: Voyager 2 captured the Red Spot region four months
after Voyager 1, when some changes had taken place in the cloud
circulation pattern around it. This is a mosaic of Voyager 2 frames,
taken on July 6. The white oval to the south is not the same one
that was present in a similar location during the Voyager 1 flyby,
because of differential rotation at the two latitudes. [260-606]]
In the northern hemisphere, small brown anticyclonic features speed
around the planet, often colliding with one another. On collision, the
spots may combine and roll around together for a while. Ultimately, part
of the mass of the combined spots is ejected as a streamer, and the
remaining material continues on its eastward path.
Order out of Chaos
Despite all the turbulence in Jupiter’s atmosphere—this ever-changing
chaotic mixture of cyclonic and anticyclonic flows, of ovals and
filaments, of reds, browns, and whites—a pattern may be emerging: There
is an underlying order to the seemingly random mixing of patterns we see
in the Jovian atmosphere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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