Amateur astronomer finds and christens Clyde's Spot -- a new storm on Jupiter

[Judi Lynn]

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Alexandru Micu by Alexandru Micu July 8, 2020

Although NASA has sent a craft to Jupiter’s orbit — the Juno probe — a newly-named region of the planet was recently spotted by an amateur astronomer.



in the center as a white maelstrom, just below and to the right of the Great Red Spot.
Image processed by Kevin Gill using JunoCam data.
Image credits NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS / Kevin M. Gill.

The structure, a swirl not far from the planet’s infamous Great Red Spot, has been christened the somewhat anticlimactic ‘Clyde’s Spot‘. At the time it was observed, Juno was flying between 28,000 miles and 59,000 miles (45,000 to 95,000 kilometers) above Jupiter’s southern cloud tops.

Long-distance spotting

“The feature is a plume of cloud material erupting above the upper cloud layers of the Jovian atmosphere,” according to a NASA description of the new imagery. “These powerful convective ‘outbreaks’ occasionally erupt in this latitude band, known as the South Temperate Belt.”

After it was spotted by Clyde Foster from Centurion, South Africa on May 31, Juno moved in to take some better-quality pictures of the structure on June 2 — which is, as far as we know, a storm.

More:
https://www.zmescience.com/science/amateur-astronomer-clyde-spot-264254/