Saturn only wins because of the rings AND having stripes. ^-^
One thing, though. Since Big Red has been relatively stable as long as we've been monitoring it (As far as I know...), perhaps Red Jr will also stablize once it reaches a certain size. After all, while it produces a lot of energy, there are also a lot of forces working AGAINST Red Jr (AKA all the gases surrounding it! ^-^)
And even though these storms are HUGE by just about any scale we can think of - just look how TINY they are in comparison to Jupiter itself (Especially when you remember all pictures are only showing us half the planet). I'd be a little more worried if there were more storms, but at the moment, two of this scale strikes me as safe.
Am I just naive?
@husker - Honestly, I doubt Jupiter could make ANYTHING worse than the SUN in terms of poisons, since stars are pretty much balanced nuclear reactions. As well, the Sun is a lot closer to Earth than Jupiter (See below), and anything would have to travel the vacuum of space THROUGH the astroid belt. I think Earth is safe. ^-^ Could have an effect on nearby stuff, though...
@AD - It's not as far as you're thinking, actually. This is true of starts, hundreds of lightyears away. Nasa.gov reveals the following stats (All distances average because the orbits are not perfect circles):
Jupiter's distance from Sun: 778,412,020 km
Earth's distance from Sun: 149,597,890 km
Therefore, estimate an average of (778,412,020 - 149,597,890) 628,814,130 km distance between Earth and Jupiter.
A light year is 9,500,000,000,000 km, which makes Jupiter an estimated (628,814,130/9,500,000,000,000) 0.0000661 light years away. Therefore, it takes about (365*6.61X10-5) 0.024 days or only 34.56 MINUTES for light from Jupiter to reach us here on Earth.
I assume. I might have screwed up somewhere.... But I think my calculations are correct.
Edit: Actually, there IS a problem somewhere in my calculations - or more precisely, an incorrect assumption. I figured it out afterwards. ^-^ Can anyone catch it? Does anyone care? LOL
