Jupiter has a second "Great Spot," and it's far colder and higher than the original.

Scientists said Tuesday that the dark spot spans 15,000 miles across and 7,500 miles wide. Located in the upper atmosphere and much cooler than its steamy surroundings, it has been named the Great Cold Spot. Unlike the Great Red Spot, this newly discovered weather system is constantly changing its shape and size and is formed by the energy from Jupiter's polar auroras.

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This April 3, 2017 image made available by NASA shows the planet Jupiter when it was at a distance of about 415 million miles from Earth.

(NASA, ESA, and A. Simon (GSFC) via AP)

At a Glance

A new "Great Spot" has been found on Jupiter, scientists said Tuesday.Named the Great Cold Spot, this weather system is located in the upper atmosphere of the planet.The spot spans 15,000 miles across and 7,500 miles wide.

A British-led team used a telescope in Chile to chart the temperature and density of Jupiter's atmosphere. When the researchers compared the data with thousands of images taken in years past by a telescope in Hawaii, the Great Cold Spot stood out. It could be thousands of years old.

"The Great Cold Spot is much more volatile than the slowly changing Great Red Spot ... but it has reappeared for as long as we have data to search for it, for over 15 years," the University of Leicester's Tom Stallard, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

Stallard said Jupiter's upper atmosphere may hold other features. Scientists will be on the lookout for them while also studying the Great Cold Spot in greater detail, using ground telescopes as well as NASA's Juno spacecraft in orbit around Jupiter, he said.

Thestudywas published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

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