What is responsible for the Great Red Spot?
It appears that lightning storms on the giant planet are clearly associated with the eddies that supply energy to the large-scale weather patterns. Using data from Galileo when it orbited Jupiter on May 4, 1999 we have discovered that thunderstorms beneath the upper cloud cover are supplying energy to the planet’s colorful large-scale weather patterns — including the 300-year-old Great Red Spot. This conclusion is possible because Galileo can provide daytime photos of the cloud structure when lightning is not visible, and nighttime photos of the same area a couple of hours later clearly showing the lightning. The thunderstorms or the lightning strikes are not normally visible because the ammonia clouds in the upper atmosphere obscure them, but when Galileo passes over the night side, bright flashes allow us to infer the depth and the intensity of the lightning bolts. Especially fortuitous are the Jovian nights when there is a bit of moonshine from one of the large moons such as Io. Wh
