The photograph was collected by the Voyager 1 spacecraft

Mar 19, 2014 15:39 GMT  ·  By

NASA has just re-released an iconic image captured by its Voyager 1 spacecraft, which whizzed past Jupiter between January and February 1979. The photograph showcases most of the Great Red Spot, a massive storm in the Jovian atmosphere believed to have first started 184 to 349 years ago. The atmospheric event is so large you could fit two to three Earths inside easily. 

Located in the southern hemisphere of the gas giant, the GRS has been under constant surveillance since Carr Walter Pritchett described it in detail in 1878. The storm is so large that even small optical telescopes on Earth can detect it through our atmosphere. The formation spins around its axis once every 6 Earth days.

As it approached Jupiter, Voyager 1 snapped hundreds of images of the planet, including the three black-and-white negatives that were stitched together and colorized to create this photo. Data collected by the prove during its flyby is still being analyzed today by researchers seeking to understand the nature and properties of the gas giant's atmosphere.

Voyager 1 has been flying through the solar system for more than 36 years, having launched from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, on September 5, 1977. The probe, manufactured at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, is currently on its way towards flying out of the solar system and returning the first-ever data from interstellar space.