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The largest storm in our solar system is moving unexpectedly, scientists say
New observations of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot captured by the Hubble Space Telescope show that the 190-year-old storm wiggles like gelatin and shape-shifts like a squeezed stress ball.

The unexpected observations, which Hubble took over 90 days from December to March, show that the Great Red Spot isn’t as stable as it appears, according to astronomers.

The Great Red Spot, or GRS, is an anticyclone, or a large circulation of winds in Jupiter’s atmosphere that rotates around a central area of high pressure along the planet’s southern midlatitude cloud belt. And the long-lived storm is so large — the biggest in the solar system — that Earth could fit inside it.

Although storms are generally considered unstable, the Great Red Spot has persisted for nearly two centuries. But the observed changes in the storm appear related to its motion and size.

A time lapse of the images shows the vortex "jiggling" like gelatin and expanding and contracting over time.

Researchers described the observation in an analysis published in The Planetary Science Journal and presented Wednesday at the 56th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences in Boise, Idaho.

"While we knew its motion varies slightly in its longitude, we didn’t expect to see the size oscillate as well. As far as we know, it’s not been identified before," said lead study author Amy Simon, pin-up casino bonus a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in a statement.

"This is really the first time we’ve had the proper imaging cadence of the GRS," Simon said. "With Hubble’s high resolution we can say that the GRS is definitively squeezing in and out at the same time as it moves faster and slower. That was very unexpected."