New Horizons Photographs Earth Sized Storm

Matthew Sparkes writes "The New Horizons spacecraft has taken the closest ever photos of Jupiter's Little Red Spot, which is actually a storm the size of Earth which has been raging since 2005. New Horizons targeted the storm when it passed Jupiter to gain speed for its journey to Pluto. The source of the red hue remains an open question. Some scientists believe hurricane-like winds lift material from beneath Jupiter's cloud-tops up to an altitude where radiation from the Sun can chemically alter it, producing the red colour. Scientists have estimated that winds in the storm were whipping around the atmosphere at 180 metres per second."

Re:

[AP2k]

Damn you, global warming!

What are the materials?

[stratjakt]

That get whipped up? Whats jupiter made of? Cheese? Cuz I like cheese.

Re:

[PrescriptionWarning]

Well wallace and gromit have already claimed the cheese from the moon, so you better act quick before they do jupiter too...

reading between the media hype

[weighn]

while stuck in some outer planet backwater bar, I overheard Jupiter's disgruntled manager - after one too many Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters (ie one) - dejected over recent interest in Saturn.

"Damn that Saturn to hell! It's smaller, it has less moons, its further away from ALL the major hotels in the solar system. It's more eccentric and possibly on drugs."

"My job should be easy. I manage the best darn gas-giant in town - but getting press is damn near impossible!"

"'Ohhh! Look at its pretty rings!' They quip. Simpletons. 'Ohh. Geometric shape!' BIG DEAL! Haven't they spun a bucket of water and looked inside?! My guy has rings too! And some pretty neat storms. Why can't those paparazzi scum run a story on that? God knows my gaseous client gets enough exposure, what with these sling-shot detours and such..."

FYI

[StikyPad]

winds in the storm were whipping around the atmosphere at 180 metres per second.

Which, for those of us unaccustomed to describing velocity in the metric system, is 402 MPH.

I'll allow someone else figure out how many Libraries of Congress per fortnight that would be.

Re:FYI

[Rick Genter]

I'll allow someone else figure out how many Libraries of Congress per fortnight that would be.

No, no, no. The standard unit for speed is furlongs per fortnight. And 180 meters per second is 1,082,319.26 furlongs per fortnight [google.com].

Re:

[beavis88]

I think 238,110 (American) football fields per fortnight is a lot more intuitive, personally.

Re:

[whitehatnetizen]

I find it slightly disconcerting that someone who calculated m/s into mpg get's modded insightful rather than informative :-D
Shamelessly ripped from the internet oracle digest #365
Ladies and gentlemen, we are here today to determine the United States
measurement challenge once and for all.
In the blue corner we have our current US champion for many years,
weighing in at 220.4623 pounds, our hero: Igor Imperial.
In the red corner we have, weighing in at 100kg all the way f

Re:

[StikyPad]

Yeah, you had me worried for a second that I'd posted the wrong units.. after checking my post though, I was about to ask you what the answer was in MPG ;)

Re:

[Drey]

Could you post a link back to the archives, next time? We could use a little more exposure. :)

Re:Speed

[FMota91]

Who in their right minds decided to use 180 metres a second?

Scientists.

Re:

[dohzer]

Scientists have two minds?
Well I guess the ones who use the metric system are slightly more intelligent.

Re:

[icensnow]

Exactly. Even in this unfashionable sector of the galaxy, all of your weather forecast and climate predictions are done with models that see everything in SI units, including winds in meters per second. They are then converted to other units for the benefit of ape=descended life forms who still think that digital watches are a neat idea. (Sorry, an earlier post got me into HHGTTG mode.) What's particularly odd when you're looking at raw model output is to see precipitation rates also given in meters per se

Re:

[MrSpiff]

and the rest of the metric world.

What century are you in?

[argent]

Call it 432mph and it'll make a lot more sense.

Wake up man, this is the century of the fruitbat! Use the metric system (named after Compte Nobee Metric, inventor of the steam pantechnicon and the pornograph) like NASA has ever since that Mars probe was lost because they were calculating fuel in hogsheads rather than barrels.

Re:

[gstoddart]

named after Compte Nobee Metric, inventor of the steam pantechnicon and the pornograph

Intriguing ... the guy who invented metric also invented porn??

(And no, I'm not googling it from work to find out what it really is ... ;-)

Cheers

Re:

[mattatwork]

Wake up man, this is the century of the fruitbat! Use the metric system (named after Compte Nobee Metric, inventor of the steam pantechnicon and the pornograph) like NASA has ever since that Mars probe was lost because they were calculating fuel in hogsheads rather than barrels.

Who is "Compte Nobbe Metric"...? I didn't find him with Google or Wikipedia....

Who is "Compte Nobbe Metric"...?

[argent]

He's obviously a contemporary of the uniquely talented Bergholt Stuttley Johnson [wikipedia.org].

Picture

[T-Bone-T]

"Click to enlarge". Ok. That's all you got? I was hoping for larger.

Re:

[sighted]

You can see the originals, as the New Horizons team posts them, here: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/ [jhuapl.edu]. If you're interested in following the many space probes that are active right now at Venus, Mars and Saturn, you can also keep up with all of them at ridingwithrobots.org [ridingwithrobots.org].

"the size of Earth"?

[alleycat0]

According to Wikipedia: "The Great Red Spot's dimensions are 24-40,000 km west to east and 12-14,000 km south to north. It is large enough to contain two or three planets the size of Earth."

Re:

[alleycat0]

Oops - didn't see that it was the *LITTLE* red spot that TFA referred to :/ Is there a way to withdraw one's posts?