[223/365] the flag of Jupiter
Aug. 11th, 2019 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistNo you've been staring at this animation of Jupiter's current cloud structures, compiled from Hubble data.
But I still can't decide if I like to look at it better when it's like that or in its original stretched-out flat form.
It looks like a flag!
I saw this when I was reading about how we are likely living in the last days of Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
I mean, in astronomical terms. It isn't likely to disappear tomorrow, but it's already significantly smaller than it was when Voyager saw it in 1979. As a kid I read about how we know how old the Great Red Spot is because it didn't used to be there: the idea that the solar system was changing just in the time since we invented telescopes to look at it seemed pretty cool to me. Still does. And yet the Great Red Spot was as much a fixture of drawings and models of our familiar planets as are the rings or Saturn (which it turns out also probably haven't always been there, albeit they're existing on a much grander timescale than any specific storm on Jupiter).
It's funny the things we take for granted. Maybe kids now won't think Jupiter has a red spot any more than they think Pluto is a planet.
But I still can't decide if I like to look at it better when it's like that or in its original stretched-out flat form.
It looks like a flag!
I saw this when I was reading about how we are likely living in the last days of Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
I mean, in astronomical terms. It isn't likely to disappear tomorrow, but it's already significantly smaller than it was when Voyager saw it in 1979. As a kid I read about how we know how old the Great Red Spot is because it didn't used to be there: the idea that the solar system was changing just in the time since we invented telescopes to look at it seemed pretty cool to me. Still does. And yet the Great Red Spot was as much a fixture of drawings and models of our familiar planets as are the rings or Saturn (which it turns out also probably haven't always been there, albeit they're existing on a much grander timescale than any specific storm on Jupiter).
It's funny the things we take for granted. Maybe kids now won't think Jupiter has a red spot any more than they think Pluto is a planet.
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Date: 2019-08-12 03:33 pm (UTC)