Or The Decent Wall of China.
Or Frederick the Passable Prussian.
The Fairly Impressive Lakes.
God damn global warming!
Yea, but isn’t this board shrinking along with the Great Red spot? Which will go out first?
Which makes the mind wander; maybe they are connected! Start new threads and post so that the GRS may live!
Well, luckily most people here have calendar functions on their computer or smartphone. Can you set a date 20 years out?
The open access article is at:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL108993
A storm that’s bigger than the Earth and which has lasted for centuries isn’t “great”? You have some mighty high standards, there.
There is also a Great Dark Spot on Neptue and one on Uranus. Great Spots might be a persistent feature on all gas giants, at least in our Solar System
That’s between me and my doctor.
As I’ve remarked before, Uranus was almost called “George” That’s what William Herschel, who discovered it, wanted to name it. He was brown-nosing King George III, his patron.
“Great Spot!!!”
If I’m remembering correctly, French astronomers at one point advocated calling it “Herschel” after its discoverer, which would have maybe been worse.
Uranus IS a dark spot.
Quite right. Cooler heads prevailed, though, and they continued with using classical Graeco-Roman mythological figures. Otherwise we’d have to deal with planets with names like William or Elizabeth or whatever.
Hey, what’s not to like about a planet named Fred?
Or… Claire?
The first solar system objects discovered that are not visible to the naked eye are the four largest moons of Jupiter, discovered by Galileo with his first telescope. He named them after his wealthy student Cosimo de’ Medici and called them “Medicea Sidera” (the Medician stars). We can all be thankful that that name did not last long.
What’s surpising to me is the names used nowadays (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto), although proposed in 1614, only became commonly used in the mid 20th century. Before that, they were referred to by numbers, Jupiter I through Jupiter IV.
My understanding is that the spot was first recorded during the play Macbeth.
Out, out! you.
“I keep scrubbing the lens of my telescope, but I cannot remove the spot!”