NASA has just released the first-ever fully rotating, accurate map of the largest planet in our solar system.
The images of Jupiter come from the Hubble Telescope, that incredible floating telescope in the sky, and are part of NASA's annual studies to document how Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune are changing over time. They particularly want to know about the planets' weather and climate patterns.
Once the images were beamed down, scientists at NASA, JPL, and the University of California, Berkeley were able to use them to build spherical maps (just like your globe at home) of the ringed planet.
The data from the telescope also gives the scientists information about Jupiter's winds (last clocked at a maximum of 384 mph), and its famous "Great Red Spot," which is shrinking and becoming more circular, just like my grandma. The Great Red Spot is the site of the greatest storm on the planet, so its shrinking size may mean a decrease in storm activity.
But don't pack up to visit Jupiter anytime soon, because it is also experiencing a "rare wave" right above its equator. It's a certain kind of baroclinic wave that is associated (on Earth) with cyclones. In layman's terms, a baroclinic wave is when the atmosphere above a planet, usually around its equator, has a particular recipe of temperature and air pressure that compound each other and cause extreme weather.
The images from the telescope, then, can give us information about how the planet will change as potential cyclones head in. That could be key information for us to have, as our own planet faces worse and worse storms as human-caused climate change continues.
The space telescope, which orbits Earth above our atmosphere, has a unique vantage point from which to see other parts of the solar system. Because it orbits above our atmosphere, it's unaffected by light that distorts our view of the cosmos down here. Our land telescopes just can't get past all the light from our own atmosphere.
NASA states that the Hubble moves at a speed of 5 miles per second, which means it could travel across the United States in about 10 minutes. The telescope was built in 1993, and first sent photos back to earth in 1994.
You can watch NASA's videos here.
