December 26, 1997
You were born into motion: oceans turning, continents drifting, clouds forming, planets circling, galaxies wheeling through the dark.
West Of The Great Red Spot
Birthday · December 26, 1997
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APOD published December 26, 1997. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
The turbulent region West of Jupiter's Great Red Spot is highlighted in this recent picture constructed from data recorded by the Galileo spacecraft. The image is color coded to show cloud height and thickness; white clouds are high and thick, light blue clouds are high and thin, and reddish clouds are low. The edge of the Red Spot itself appears blue here (lower right) and spans about 6,600 miles along the curving limb of the planet (north is up). Westward winds, deflected north by the circulation within the Great Red Spot, collide with Eastward winds at higher latitudes and generate the roiling, turbulent structures. The largest eddies near the Northwestern edge of the Red Spot are bright, suggesting upward convection and high altitude cloud formation are taking place there.