Great Red Spot - Great Red Spot The Great Red Spot(GRS is a...

Great Red Spot
The Great Red Spot (GRS) is a persistent anticyclonic storm , 22° south of Jupiter's equator,
which has lasted for at least 181 years and possibly longer than 346 years.
[65] [66]
The storm is
large enough to be visible through Earth -based telescopes .
An infrared image of GRS (top) showing its warm center, taken by the ground based Very Large
Telescope. An image made by the Hubble Space Telescope (bottom) is shown for comparison.
The GRS rotates counterclockwise, with a period of about six Earth days [67] or 14 Jovian days. Its
dimensions are 24–40,000 km west–to–east and 12–14,000 km south–to–north. The spot is large
enough to contain two or three planets the size of Earth. At the start of 2004, the Great Red Spot
had approximately half the longitudinal extent it had a century ago, when it was 40,000 km in
diameter. At the present rate of reduction it could potentially become circular by 2040, although
this is unlikely because of the distortion effect of the neighboring jet streams. [68] It is not known
how long the spot will last, or whether the change is a result of normal fluctuations. [69]
According to a study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley , between 1996 and
2006 the spot lost 15 percent of its diameter along its major axis. Xylar Asay-Davis, who was on