It has come to our attention that the Solar System is tightening its wallet. Our sun is in a Deep Solar Minimum and Jupiter’s Red Spot is not as stormy as it used to be.

The Jovian Eye Looking Smaller Year by Year

The spot, which is actually an ancient monster storm that measures about three Earths across, lost 15 percent of its diameter between 1996 and 2006, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found.

It shrank by about 1 kilometer (about 0.6 miles) a day during that time period, said Xylar Asay-Davis, a postdoctoral researcher who was part of the study.

[…]
Astronomers see a dramatic difference in the spot’s shape when comparing photos of Jupiter taken more than a century ago to recent images of the planet. Orton joked that the Great Red Spot used to be so long that its acronym should have stood for the “Great Red Sausage.”

“I just happened to look at an old picture and said to myself, ‘That looks like a breakfast sausage.’ It’s very long. I mean, if you look at one of those pictures back from then and a picture now, you think, ‘My God, this thing is going on a diet,” Orton said.

Now eye-shaped, the spot is expected to become circular by about 2040, he added.

Thanks for making us hungry, astronomer Orton. You’ve blown our breakfast diet for at least a month. How would you like it if we came to your workplace and spoke all day of the pizza rings of Saturn or the oceans of Dr Pepper that lurk just under the surface of Mars.

Also, Faithful Readers, we do not suggest plugging “great red sausage” into your Google search machines at work. Trust us on this.

Read the rest of this entry »