The Hubble telescope took two new photographs of Jupiter, which included the opposite hemispheres of the gas giant. On them, in particular, you can see streaks of hurricanes, the winds of which blow at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per hour, reports Space. com.

Hubble received the images on January 5-6, 2024. Jupiter rotates every 10 hours, so the telescope was able to photograph the hemisphere with the famous Great Red Spot and wait for it to rotate the opposite way.

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And the resulting images show that some events are happening on Jupiter.

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Jupiter passed perihelion - the point of its orbit closest to the Sun - on January 21, 2023. A year later, summer's heating is still affecting the gas giant's atmosphere.

A distinctive feature of Jupiter is its white and dark stripes, which can be seen even with an amateur telescope.. With the help of Hubble, you can examine every detail of these stripes. The lighter stripes are called " The darker bands are called "

One hemisphere is home to the famous Great Red Spot, a hurricane that has raged for at least 200 years.. But the question of its longevity remains open, since the hurricane is shrinking at a high rate.

At the end of the 19th century, the width of the Great Red Spot was 41 thousand kilometers, its area was so huge that it could accommodate three Earths. But when Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 flew past Jupiter in 1979, they noticed that the hurricane's area had shrunk to 23,000 kilometers.. In 1995, Hubble observed the Great Red Spot and noticed that its diameter had shrunk to 20,950 kilometers..

In 2014, the diameter of the hurricane was already 16,500 kilometers, in 2021 - 14,750 kilometers, and in 2023 - already 12,500 kilometers. The Great Red Spot has gone from being a huge oval, big enough to hold three Earths, to being round, and now it won't even fit one Earth..

Scientists don't know why the Great Red Spot is shrinking. But its size is still impressive.

This is a giant hurricane that could contain our entire planet, it extends to a depth of about 500 kilometers in the atmosphere of Jupiter. The winds that rage here blow at speeds from 430 to 680 kilometers per hour.

Previously, scientists said that the newborn Jupiter was so bright and hot that it irradiated its four moons with such intense light that it evaporated their water and stripped them of volatile substances. This may explain the strange composition of the planet's Galilean moons.