Today NASA released a nice little video simulation of what it would be like to enter Jupiter’s Great Red Spot – a massive storm, larger than the Earth, that has been raging on the planet for at least 300 years!
Incidentally, Jupiter is probably my favorite planet in the solar system – As a kid I paid heavy attention to the Galileo mission and now, while I seem to have somehow avoided writing about it, I do pay attention to updates from the Juno probe currently orbiting the massive world.
Jupiter as a planet is strange – it’s almost a failed star, given its material makeup and mass, and while not as stunning to look at as Saturn, internally it’s kind of indescribable.
Back on the subject of this video, as I said, it “dives into” the Great Red Spot, simulating what it would be like inside, including a temperature and altitude scale to give you an idea on just how intense the heat gets as you get deeper into the Jovian atmosphere.
To quote the video description:
“This animation takes the viewer on a simulated flight into, and then out of, Jupiter’s upper atmosphere at the location of the Great Red Spot. It was created by combining an image from the JunoCam imager on NASA’s Juno spacecraft with a computer-generated animation. The perspective begins about 2,000 miles (3,000 kilometers) above the cloud tops of the planet’s southern hemisphere. The bar at far left indicates altitude during the quick descent; a second gauge next to that depicts the dramatic increase in temperature that occurs as the perspective dives deeper down. The clouds turn crimson as the perspective passes through the Great Red Spot. Finally, the view ascends out of the spot.”
Awesome. Just awesome. Check it out.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasas-juno-probes-the-depths-of-jupiters-great-red-spot