Hubble space telescope captures stunning image of barred spiral galaxy

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured new images of Jupiter, providing the world with never-before-seen details of a previously unidentified filament in the “Great Red Spot”-the awe-inspiring hurricane which triples the size of Earth, and has been wrecking havoc on the giant planet for centuries while remaining a constant source of interest to NASA scientists”. The storm, known as the Great Red Spot, is seen above swirling at the centre of the image of the planet.

The two new maps were captured by Hubble’s high-performance Wide Field Camera 3 and analysed by planetary scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The latest maps of Jupiter confirm that the Giant Red Spot is shrinking fast into a Medium Red Spot. This is because its longest axis now appears 150 miles shorter than it did in 2014.

NASA has been focusing the Hubble telescope on Jupiter to collect more detailed information about how the planet changes over time. It’s also starting to look a little more orange than red, but its winds are still blowing at a snappy 330 miles (530 kilometers) per hour. NASA suggests that the observations are created to capture “a broad range of features, including winds, clouds, storms and atmospheric chemistry”. “This time is no exception.”

Similar to the way schools make pictures every year of children, NASA scientists are making annual portraits of the solar system’s outer planets.

One theory suggests that these are baroclinic waves, which often form in the Earth’s atmosphere as cyclones begin to form.

The current wave was found in a region dotted with cyclones and anticyclones.

“Until now, we thought the wave seen by Voyager 2 might have been a fluke”, says study co-author Glenn Orton at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “As it turns out, it’s just rare!”

The wave could originate in a transparent layer beneath the clouds, exclusively turning into seen when it propagates up into the cloud deck, in keeping with the researchers. Saturn will probably be added to the collection later.