A swirling, oval white cloud in Jupiter’s South South Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Known as White Oval A5, the feature is an anticyclonic storm. An anticyclone is a weather phenomenon where winds around the storm flow in the direction opposite to those of the flow around a region of low pressure.
Juno took the two images used to produce this color-enhanced view on September 6, 2018, at 6:45 p.m. PDT (9:45 p.m. EDT) and 6:58 p.m. PDT (9:58 p.m. EDT) as the Juno spacecraft performed its 15th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was about 25,000 miles (40,500 kilometers) to 39,000 miles (63,000 kilometers) from Jupiter’s cloud tops, above a southern latitude spanning from about 54 to 66 degrees.
Citizen scientist Kevin M. Gill created this image using data from the spacecraft’s JunoCam imager.
JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and to process into image products at: http://missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam.
More information about Juno is at: http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu.
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2 Comments
Please explain how it is spiraling inward like a low pressure system yet spins anticyclonically. These white ovals behave in a similar fashion to tropical cyclones on our own planet, but rotate in the wrong direction.
I do not believe an anticyclonic storm is possible due to the reason clouds and stickiness mean air is rising and hence pressure falling.
High pressure systems on earth are areas of sinking air; cloud formation is suppressed and skies are clear and winds light so how can jupiter have storms such as these??
Awesome Animation of Jupiter
https://youtu.be/YZc1Y662jtk