PIA02823: Oval Storms Merging on Jupiter


Oval Storms Merging on Jupiter

Caption:

These four images of clouds in a portion of Jupiter's southern hemisphere show steps in the consolidation of three "white oval" storms into one over a three-year span of time. They were obtained on four dates, from Sept. 18, 1997, to Sept. 2, 2000, by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The widths of the white ovals range from about 8,000 kilometers to 12,000 kilometers (about 5,000 miles to 7,500 miles). North is up and east is to the right.

The top image shows three white oval storms, which had coexisted for about 60 years. They were nicknamed FA, DE and BC, in order from west to east. By mid-1998, as shown in the second image, the two easternmost storms had merged into one, called BE. By October 1999, as shown in the third image, the merged oval and the last of the original three were approaching each other, but they were separated by a dark storm, called o 1, between them. The two white oval storms later merged into a single storm, as shown in the final image from September 2000.

Background Info:

The Hubble Space Telescope is a facility of NASA and the European Space Agency. It is operated by the Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md., which is managed for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy in Honolulu.

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Jupiter
System Jupiter
Target Type Planet
Mission Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
Instrument Host Hubble Space Telescope
Host Type Space Telescope
Instrument Wide Field/Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2)
Detector
Extra Keywords Atmosphere, Grayscale, Storm
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2000-10-23
Date in Caption
Image Credit NASA/JPL/WFPC2
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02823
Identifier PIA02823