Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Is Really Just Sunburn

A recent NASA experiment showed that planet Jupiter’s famous red spot is a product of the sun’s rays rather than chemicals beneath the cloud cover.

Scientists working on NASA’s Cassini mission have recently discovered that the famous ‘red spot’ on planet Jupiter isn’t a result of elements sitting beneath the cloud cover of the largest planet in our universe. Rather, it’s the sun’s rays breaking apart the clouds in the planet’s upper atmosphere.

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Our models suggest most of the Great Red Spot is actually pretty bland in color, beneath the upper cloud layer of reddish material,” said team scientist Kevin Baines, per Science Daily. “Under the reddish ‘sunburn’ the clouds are probably whitish or grayish.”

Well, there goes that great theory we had about the planet just needing a little anti-zit cream. The experiment itself went as such:

"In the lab, the researchers blasted ammonia and acetylene gases — chemicals known to exist on Jupiter — with ultraviolet light, to simulate the sun’s effects on these materials at the extreme heights of clouds in the Great Red Spot. This produced a reddish material, which the team compared to the Great Red Spot as observed by Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS)."

See, there you have it. Next time someone’s giving you this line about how Jupiter’s got red clouds, just tell them, “Look, it’s just the ammonia and acetylene gases in the upper atmosphere reacting to the sun’s rays.”

Or call it sunburn. Whichever you prefer, really.

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