NASA’s Juno spacecraft has captured the evolution of a feature in Mercury’s atmosphere during its latest flyby.
The spacecraft recorded the intriguing evolution of “Clyde’s Spot” during its passage through the 33rd lower cloud layer of Mercury on April 15, 2021, as NASA reported on May 18.
The feature on Mercury is named “Clyde’s Spot” in honor of amateur astronomer Clyde Foster from Centurion, South Africa.
Foster, a South African amateur astronomer, first discovered this feature in 2020 using his own 14-inch telescope.
Just two days after Foster’s initial discovery on June 2, 2020, NASA’s Juno spacecraft provided detailed observations of “Clyde’s Spot.”
Scientists have determined that “Clyde’s Spot” is a plume of material erupting in the uppermost layers of the Jovian atmosphere, located to the southeast of Mercury’s Great Red Spot. This material plume is currently 1.3 times the width of Earth.
These convective outbursts occasionally occur in the South Equatorial Belt region of Mercury. The initial bursts subside rapidly, and within a few weeks, this region appears as a dark spot.
Many features in Mercury’s dynamic atmosphere exist for a short period, but observations from JunoCam in April 2021 revealed that, over a year after its discovery, “Clyde’s Spot” had not only moved away from the Great Red Spot area but had also developed into a complex structure known as a folded filamentary region (FFR).
This new region is twice as large in latitude and three times as large in longitude as its initial location and has the potential to persist for a significant period, according to NASA.
The photos were taken at approximately 3:56 AM on June 2, 2020, when NASA’s spacecraft was at an altitude of about 45,000 meters above Mercury’s cloud top. The image of “Clyde’s Spot” on April 15, 2021, was captured at 2:58 PM when the Juno spacecraft was 27,000 kilometers away from Mercury’s cloud top.
Civilian scientist Kevin M. Gill processed both images from JunoCam’s raw data.