Red Spot

While Jupiter's Great Red Spot has been a constant feature of the planet for centuries, University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have discovered equally large spots at the planet's north and south poles that appear and disappear seemingly at random.

Jupiter's iconic Great Red Spot has persisted for at least 190 years and is likely a different spot from the one observed by the astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1665, a new study reports.

The Great Red Spot is the largest known planetary vortex within the solar system, but its age has long been debated, and the mechanism that led to its formation has remained obscure.

"From the measurements of sizes and movements, we deduced that it is highly unlikely that the current Great Red Spot was the 'Permanent Spot' observed by Cassini," said Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, a planetary scientist at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, who led this research.

"The 'Permanent Spot' probably disappeared sometime between the mid-18th and 19th centuries, in which case we can now say that the longevity of the Red Spot exceeds 190 years."