Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Jupiter's Great Dark Spot

Posted by chrisd on from the places-to-visit-on-vacation dept.

Edball writes "For more than a century astronomers thought that the Great Red Spot was the biggest thing on Jupiter. Not anymore. Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have revealed something at least as large, The Great Dark Spot." In related solar system news, pajamacore writes "Space.com reports that the first extrasolar planet to have its atmosphere detected is having its gas envelope boiled off by heat and blown away by tidal forces. At present, the planet is 70% the size of Jupiter but its orbit is closer to its parent star than Mercury's is to our own Sun. It should be a treat to eventually see the planet's core and maybe it'll clue us in a bit to gas giant formation."

4 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. Faster better cheaper? by Tailhook · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Chalk one up for slow, lame(?) and expensive. Cassini is firmly among the old-school "big budget" NASA projects. The probe cost over 3 billion dollars. Read about that here.

    Cassini. Remember that name. You're going to hear a lot about Cassini over the next few years. The knowledge brought to us by that probe will make science headlines for the rest of this decade. Not bad for something that cost 15% of the Federal Foodstamp budget in FY2001.

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    1. Re:Faster better cheaper? by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 4, Interesting
      You're going to hear a lot about Cassini over the next few years.

      That is assuming the folks at Lockhead and Boeing can stick to metric.

      Man, if I screw up a client's computer, I don't get hired back. Hell, they will usually go so far as to tell their friends and peers not to use me.

      If you are a miliary^H^H^H^H^H^Haerospace contractor and you screw something up you get bonuses and additional contracts.

      --
      "Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
      --Dr.W.Edwards Deming
  2. Losing mass, changing orbit? by gnovos · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Wouldn't the loss of mass for that planet eventually cause it's orbit to get bigger and bigger? Eventually it would reach some kind of break even point where it's no bigger than the head of small dog, no?

    --
    "Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
  3. Re:A moon hit the planet by Oddly_Drac · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Learn some basic astronomy."

    You mean planetography.

    "Underneath the outer atmosphere is liquid metallic hydrogen. What does that mean?"

    You're putting forward theory as fact and missing a several thousand kilometre thick wodge of increasingly dense gas that can stay partially stable for months or centuries in the case of the Great Red Spot.

    OD

    --
    Oddly Draconis
    Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.