Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a storm wider than Earth that has raged for centuries.

The longer version

The Great Red Spot is an anticyclone, a high pressure vortex circulating within Jupiter's cloud deck. Its winds blow around a center that has stayed in roughly the same latitude band for as long as telescopic records exist, even though the spot has shrunk noticeably in recent decades. The storm is wide enough to swallow Earth several times over.

Jupiter has no solid ground to slow a storm down, and its rapid rotation plus strong internal heat supply plenty of energy. The reddish tint likely comes from chemicals dredged up from deeper layers and altered by sunlight, though the exact compounds remain under discussion.

Where this entry sits

The night sky looks calm, yet almost everything up there is moving, burning, or slowly changing. These facts cover planets, stars, the Moon, gravity, black holes, comets, and the story of how people began exploring beyond Earth. The full list sits on the Space and Sky page, where every entry is listed in order.