Observation by Damian Peach: The Great Red Spot - not so Great These ...

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Observer

Damian Peach

Observed

2015 Apr 13 - 22:00

Uploaded

2015 Jun 13 - 07:35

Objects

Jupiter

Target name

Jupiter GRS

Title

The Great Red Spot - not so Great These Days?

About this image

As Jupiter starts to rush ever closer to Venus in our evening skies, Damian has created a very nice comparison which really illustrates how much the storm has shrunk in the last 125 years. He states that to his knowledge there is no really nice graphical comparison of this around and so decided to make one.

He sourced some fairly decent old black and white photos taken at the Lick Observatory in 1890-91 which show the GRS well, and allow measurement of the storm (which we already know at this time was around 36,000km in length from multiple observations and photos). He then manipulated his April 13th image data to carefully match the storm to the correct dimensions as to how it appeared 125yrs ago. Since there are no colour or high resolution photographs of the storm from these early times (and the photos we have are far from being of great resolution) this presents quite a neat comparison of how it would look to us today if were still as large, and shows just how much of its grandeur has been lost.

Nice work, Damian and a very worthy Picture of the Week.

Files associated with this observation

wk25_15_grs_sizecomp_peach.jpg (331.3 kB)

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