The Juno spacecraft saw the unusual black spot as it orbited the enormous gas giant Jupiter. It seems to be located in the center of a ‘vortex’ and is likely relatively deep, however, its precise properties are unknown at this time.
What is that mysterious black spot on Jupiter? No one knows.
‘During the latest pass of NASA’s Juno around Jupiter, the robotic spacecraft imaged an unusually dark cloud feature informally dubbed the Abyss. Surrounding cloud patterns show the Abyss to be at the centre of a vortex. Since dark features on Jupiter’s atmosphere tend to run deeper than light features, the Abyss may really be the deep hole that it appears — but without more evidence that remains conjecture.
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‘The Abyss is surrounded by a complex of meandering clouds and other swirling storm systems, some of which are topped by light-colored, high-altitude clouds. The featured image was captured last month while Juno passed only about 15,000 kilometers above Jupiter’s cloud tops.’
Our lovely planet is a large ball of rock and metal covered by vast landmasses and life-sustaining oceans.
Jupiter, on the other hand, is a cloud-shrouded gas giant that may not even have a surface on which people may walk.
These two planets may seem to be completely unlike, yet images released by NASA earlier this year reveal that certain processes are the same on both worlds.
‘In interpreting what we see elsewhere in the solar system and universe, we always compare with phenomena that we already know of on Earth,’ said Norman Kuring of the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center.
We progress from the known to the unknown.
You may not instantly recognize the similarities between Earth and Jupiter.
But what NASA is pointing out are ‘eddies’ in Jupiter’s atmosphere that resemble the Baltic Sea on Earth.
NASA noted that since the motion of fluids on both planets is regulated by the same physical principles, an eddy on Earth resembles an eddy on Jupiter.
‘This is all about fluids moving around on a rotating body,’ Kuring added. ‘Out of all the complexity flows beauty, whether it be images of Earth, Jupiter, or your coffee cup when you pour in the cream’
Jupiter is known to harbor three cloud layers, the outermost of which is seen in the image captured by NASA.
The image of Earth depicts a green phytoplankton bloom “tracing the edges of a Baltic Sea vortex.”
NASA said the ‘very different planets display similar patterns’ because they are ‘governed by the same laws of physics’.