ROANOKE, Va. – Jupiter’s legendary red spot is showing itself to be even stronger now than it was more than a decade ago. That’s at least the case in the outer part of the storm. Contrary to what we see in storms on Earth, this massive storm’s winds on the inner part are moving more slowly.
The storm is larger than the Earth itself (diameter of 10,000 miles) and now has winds that travel higher than 400 miles per hour. It’s unknown if that’s what’s going on at the surface, but the clouds are traveling at that speed, according to NASA.
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To put that in perspective, the maximum sustained wind in the Atlantic’s worst hurricanes on record haven’t touched 200 miles per hour.
While we don’t necessarily have the aircraft or technology to track the storm’s every move, like we do on Earth, the Hubble telescope has made observations possible since 2009 (and it’s what made this most recent discovery possible).
Humans have observed this spot for the last 150 years.