Jupiter's Great Red Spot looks way different in a 2025 shot vs a 2015 one

I pulled up two photos of Jupiter from astrobin, one from March 2015 and one from this past February, and the Great Red Spot is visibly smaller and more oval now. The 2015 image shows it stretching almost like a teardrop, while the newer one looks tighter and rounder, which matches what amateur observers have been reporting for a decade. Has anyone else noticed the spot's color shifting from brick red to a paler salmon tone in their own captures?

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2 Comments

danielr9424d ago

Have you been checking your own captures against older ones too? I went through my 2016 stack last week and it was wild, the spot looked like a stretched out blob back then, now it's way more compact in my February run. Also, I definitely see the color shift, mine used to have that deep rusty orange, now it's almost a washed out pink, especially near the edges. I even bumped up the saturation in processing to see if it was my camera, but no, it's really just paler now.

umamartin24d ago

Ha, tell me about it! @danielr94, I literally pulled up my 2015 Pluto shots last night and it looks like a smudged fingerprint compared to now. Maybe all that time in the salty air just faded the poor thing, like an old t-shirt left in the sun too long.