A giant Jovian storm called Oval BA is captured in an amazing new video from NASA’s Juno mission.
Oval BA and the famed Great Red Spot. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.
Oval BA is approximately 5,000 miles (8,000 km) across — about half the size of the famous Great Red Spot.
It reached its current size when three smaller spots collided and merged in 2000.
The Great Red Spot may have formed from the same process centuries ago.
The counterclockwise motion of Oval BA is clearly on display.
A similar rotation can be seen in the Great Red Spot at the top of the animation.
This image was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed its most recent close flyby of Jupiter on December 21, 2018. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Gerald Eichstaedt / Sean Doran.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft took the nine images used to produce this movie sequence on December 21, 2018, between 12:24 p.m. EST (9:24 a.m. PST) and 1:07 p.m. EST (10:07 a.m. PST).
At the time the images were taken, the robotic orbiter was between approximately 15,400 miles (24,800 km) and 60,700 miles (97,700 km) from the planet’s cloud tops above southern latitudes spanning about 36 to 74 degrees.
