Jupiter's big red hotspot?

Scientists may have found their answer to why temperatures in Jupiter's upper atmosphere are similar to those on Earth, even though the planet lies five times further away from the sun.

Using an infrared telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, observers found that above the Great Red Spot (GRS) the upper atmosphere is hundreds of degrees hotter than other observable parts of the planet.

"We could see almost immediately that our maximum temperatures at high altitudes were above the Great Red Spot far below - a weird coincidence or a major clue?" Boston University research scientist James O'Donoghue said.

The study was described in the journal Nature. Through a process of elimination, scientists worked out that the hot spot must be being heated via the storm below. The exact process for such heat transfer is unknown, but experts have put forward that acoustic or gravity waves from below could be raising the temperature.

An Boston University image depicting the process was tweeted by NASA.

The GRS was captured in a photograph earlier this month by the NASA spacecraft Juno as it approached the Jupiter system. The probe, which is on a 20-month mission to map Jupiter from pole to pole, is expected to take higher-resolution photographs at closer quarters in the weeks to come.

'Salmon pink to brick red'

The storm, which is 13,670 miles by 7,456 miles (22,000 km by 12,000 km), is thought to be big enough to swallow up three Earths within its active area.

The storm's swirling colorful pattern of gases is sometimes described as a "perpetual hurricane," although some scientists have suggested that it is gradually getting smaller.

Accounts that possibly describe the spot come from as early as the 17th century and, in 1900, it was described as salmon pink colored and oval. Since then, it's gradually become darker in color and rounder in shape.