No, that's not the Great Red Spot you are looking at. It's the Little Red Spot, on the other side of Jupiter. Little is a word only used in comparison to its bigger brother, though. The "Little" Red Spot is still a storm about the size of Earth, whereas the Great Red Spot could fit three Earths inside.
NASA unveiled new images taken by the Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft this week. The mission to Pluto, launched in January of 2006, had a scheduled stop to make at Jupiter to steal some momentum and receive a speed boost along its journey. New Horizons is already the fastest spacecraft ever launched. It should reach Pluto by the year 2015.
The Little Red Spot is a storm on Jupiter that formed when three smaller storms merged. The Great Red Spot has been in existence on Jupiter ever since Galileo first turned his telescope toward the planet 300 years ago, so the birth of the Little Red Spot has given astronomers insight into the formation of such storms on giant planets. The Little Red Spot is the second-largest storm on Jupiter and began turning to its current reddish hue about a year ago. Younger storms are often whitish in color.
As New Horizons made its closest pass by Jupiter on February 28, it came within 1.4 million miles of the giant planet. Besides stealing the speed boost, the close encounter is allowing scientists to test the seven cameras and sensors on the spacecraft. The Little Red Spot was only a part of 700 observations made by New Horizons instruments.
Small moons were caught "herding" the faint ring of Jupiter into place. This is similar to what was already known of Saturn's rings. These shepherd moons include the tiny Metis and Adrastea. NASA has put together movies of the moons as they orbit Jupiter and keep its thin ring in line. Unexpected clumps were found in Jupiter's ring, indicating a recent collision with a smaller sized object.
The icy moon Europa and its mysterious circular troughs was imaged by New Horizons. Data from these images combined with observations made by the Galileo mission will help scientists determine how thick its icy skin covering is. Images of the moon Io, including a massive erupting volcano named Tvashtar, were beamed back across the 600 million miles. The cameras aboard New Horizons revealed different views of Io, including pockets of bright, glowing lava; small, glowing spots of gas, and the fountain-shaped plume from Tvashtar. The LEISA image of Io is interesting because it appears similar to a night-side view of Earth with its artificial lights from cities, except in the Io picture the points of light on the night side are from volcanic eruptions.
