The giant planet Jupiter has been "giving us the eye," as recorded in an image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope that is just a bit creepy -- and just in time for Halloween.
While monitoring Jupiter's Great Red Spot, an ongoing cyclone storm bigger than the entire Earth, Hubble snapped a picture of the storm that seemed to have gained a pupil for its eye -- courtesy of Jupiter's moon Ganymede, whose shadow just happened to fall in the middle of the giant spiral storm.
The image, recently released by NASA, was captured on April 21 as the moon's shadow sat in the middle of the storm's 10,000-mile-wide "eye."
"For a moment, Jupiter 'stared' back at Hubble like a one-eyed giant Cyclops," NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said in a post with the image on Flickr.
The Great Red Spot was first measured by astronomers in the late 1800s, and has been slowly decreasing in size, its diameter decreasing 15 percent between 1996 and 2006.
Still it is still one of the biggest surface features on the planet, and perhaps in the solar system, with a diameter that could easily accommodate three Earths side by side.
Sitting 22 degrees south of Jupiter's equator, it was observed as early as 1635 using very early telescopes.
The Great Red Spot rotates, in a manner similar to a hurricane on earth, making complete revolution ever six Earth days.
Infrared observations have shown the spot to be colder than most of the other clouds on Jupiter, evidence that it sits at a high altitude.
The Great Red Spot is not always red; its color can vary from brick-red to a subdued salmon hue to almost completely white.
Scientists suspect its coloration is caused by complex organic molecules or perhaps by other chemical compounds.
