<P> The Great Red Spot should not be confused with the Great Dark Spot, a feature observed near the northern pole of Jupiter in 2000 with the Cassini--Huygens spacecraft . Note that a feature in the atmosphere of Neptune was also called the Great Dark Spot . The latter feature was imaged by Voyager 2 in 1989, and may have been an atmospheric hole rather than a storm and it was no longer present as of 1994 (although a similar spot had appeared farther to the north). </P> <P> NASA's Juno Spacecraft flew over the Great Red Spot on July 11, 2017, taking several images of the Spot from about 5,000 miles (8,000 km) above the surface . </P> <P> The oval object rotates counter-clockwise, with a period of about six Earth days or fourteen Jovian days . Measuring in at 10,159 miles (16,350 kilometers) in width (as of April 3, 2017) Jupiter's Great Red Spot is 1.3 times as wide as Earth . The cloud - tops of this storm are about eight kilometres above the surrounding cloud - tops . </P> <P> Infrared data have long indicated that the Great Red Spot is colder (and thus, higher in altitude) than most of the other clouds on the planet . However, recent infrared measurements of the upper atmosphere show far more heat above the Great Red Spot than the rest of the planet; "acoustic waves" rising from the storm have been proposed as an explanation for Jupiter's temperature . </P>

How big is the giant red spot on jupiter