A storm the size of Earth tearing across the surface of Jupiter gets a close-up in this view from a NASA probe.

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, currently bound for distant Pluto, caught this close-up look at Jupiter’s Little Red Spot -- the smaller tempest counterpart to the gas giant’s infamous Great Red Spot that has churned for centuries.

New Horizons used its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) to build this of the Little Red Spot during a 9.5-hour session on Feb. 26, 2007 from a distance of about 2.2 million miles (3.5 million kilometers) from Jupiter. The image is actually a mosaic of several images taken during New Horizons Jupiter flyby, a sort of cosmic waystop on its way to Pluto.

Jupiter’s Little Red Spot changed from white to red in 2005, though astronomers aren’t completely sure why. One theory is that droplets of sulfur may have been sucked up into the storm’s upper level of ammonia clouds, causing the new red hue.

Another large storm in this image can be seen as the smaller, brighter oval to the south of the Little Red Spot.

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-- SPACE.com Staff

Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.