The Hubble Space Telescope spent hours in observing eye Jupiter and took some photographs of the impressive atmosphere and mysterious Red Spot of the largest planetary inhabitant of our solar system.

The photos display ongoing changes to the Red Spot visible from Earth since the starting of modern astronomy. In reality the Red Spot is a long-lived atmospheric storm that has been swirling south of the huge planet's equator for at least 300 years

Hubble’s latest images have given confirmation that the spot has been shrinking due to the weakening of the storm. They showed that it has shrunk by 150 miles in the past year. It has become half of the width it was 100 years ago, when it was nearly 25,000 miles across.

Astronomers said that it's also not as red as it used to be. They added that it has less intense colors at its center and newly observed wispy filaments twisting and turning via it in 330 mph winds.

They reported in the Astrophysical Journal that filamentary feature and a strange atmospheric wave feature just a little north of the equator are among the latest discoveries in Hubble's annual mapping of Jupiter.

A NASA planetary scientist with the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Amy Simon said, “Every time we look at Jupiter, we get tantalizing hints that something really exciting is going on. This time is no exception”.

Previously the wave feature has been noticed only once decades ago when the Voyager 2 space probe passed Jupiter. The new images have shown the wave spanning a part of the planet's atmosphere where formation of cyclones and anticyclones is taking place. The waves are known as baroclinic waves.

"The collection of maps that we will build up over time will not only help scientists understand the atmospheres of our giant planets, but also the atmospheres of planets being discovered around other stars, and Earth's atmosphere and oceans, too," notes study co-author Michael H. Wong of the University of California, Berkeley.