NO one can miss out on the Great Red Spot. It is not just prominent, but also very big. The Great Red Spot is the most photogenic feature of Jupiter’s clouds.

It is three times the size of Earth, and has been there for hundreds of years, maybe thousands. The grand old man of science, Galileo Galilae, saw and drew a sketch of it in 1609AD. Extensive studies have been carried out particularly since the American spacecraft, the Voyager studied it and took thousands of photographs for immediate and future studies.

In particular, the Great Red Spot went through a critical examination and it has been verified that it is a great swirl of clouds which is going to stay there, not only for thousands of years but even longer, maybe as far in time as can be worked out. The question that arose was, where did it get the energy to keep going for so long?

The answer astounded them no less: the Great Red Spot draws its relentless energy from the smaller eddies. An eddy is a small swirl, that when it feeds into the bigger eddy melts into the eddy together with its energy. And because it feeds into the bigger one completely, it gives away its energy completely, thus providing the Great Red Spot with renewed source of energy, sustaining it virtually permanently. In other words, the Great Red Spot has been cannibalising them at will.

As you can guess for yourself all hurricanes must lose their energy soon, once their force is spent because there is nothing to replenish that energy. Not in the case of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot though.

The Great Red Spot has reserved for itself the same, unique place all this while. A small telescope reveals this reality in no uncertain terms. In fact, the Orion Nebula, the Andromeda galaxy and the Great Red Spot on the face of Jupiter are the three features our young observers could discover for themselves and find the discovery immensely enjoyable.

In the Southern Hemisphere there are those Magellanic clouds, the satellite galaxies of the Mother Galaxy, the Milky Way. At the same time, planet Venus has been gracing our skies these days. It is a scintillating naked-eye sight for the viewers looking in the west just after sunset for the next few days.

Also intriguing is the belt around Jupiter. Yet until some time back no one would have believed that planet Jupiter too had a belt. Thanks to Voyager-1, a very thin and fine, and tenuous belt of frozen chunks of debris is all it has to show off. But what is surprising again is the mystery as to where the debris came and why despite the killing gravity of the great planet it has not dissipated, or collapsed into the planet altogether?

The answer seems to lie in the many stray asteroids, or, tiny moonlets encircling the mighty planet. As they race out of their orbits, they tend to graze against each other, causing some of the portion to turn into rubble and some portion into fine dust. This dust and rubble provides the planet with material which revolves around the planet as the belt. In other words, the rubble feeds the belt from time to time, keeping it alive!

Now comes the paradox of crevices on the surface of Jupiter, as on the surface of any planet or moon. We know it from previous knowledge that cracks and crevices appear as a result of factors of commotion from within, and due to crashes of meteors but, primarily, comets and asteroids coming in from outer space. When that happens the belly of the planet opens up violently. Out come the overheated gasses, and molten lava and other super-heated matter, including water, or what I like to call, proto water!

Enough for now, I suppose! Next we have another fantastic planet: the Jewel of the Solar System, planet Saturn. From the next issue onward!