The east-to-west dimension of the left-most white oval is 9,000 kilometers (5,592 miles) across. For comparison, the diameter of Earth is 12,756 kilometers, or 7,928 miles. The white ovals drift in longitude relative to one another and are presently restricting the cyclonic structure. To the south, the smaller oval and its accompanying cyclonic system are moving eastward at about 0.4 degrees per day relative to the larger ovals. The interaction between these two cyclonic storm systems is producing high, thick cumulus-like clouds in the southern part of the more northerly trapped system.
The top mosaic combines the violet (410 nanometers) and near infrared continuum (756 nanometers) filter images to create a mosaic similar to how Jupiter would appear to human eyes. Differences in coloration are due to the composition and abundance of trace chemicals in Jupiter's atmosphere.
The lower mosaic uses the Galileo imaging camera's three near-infrared wavelengths (756 nanometers, 727 nanometers, and 889 nanometers displayed in red, green, and blue) to show variations in cloud height and thickness. Light blue clouds are high and thin, reddish clouds are deep, and white clouds are high and thick. The clouds and haze over the white ovals are high, extending into Jupiter's stratosphere. There is a lack of high haze over the cyclonic feature. Dark purple most likely represents a high haze overlying a clear deep atmosphere. Galileo is the first spacecraft to distinguish cloud layers on Jupiter.
North is at the top of these mosaics. The smallest resolved features are tens of kilometers in size. These images were taken on February 19, 1997, at a range of 1.1 million kilometers (683,507 miles) by the solid state imaging (CCD) system aboard NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is an operating division of California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo..
Voir l'image PIA00700: Jupiter's White Ovals/True and False Color sur le site de la NASA.
Scientists have spotted what appear to be thunderheads on Jupiter bright white cumulus clouds similar to those that bring thunderstorms on Earth - at the outer edges of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Images from NASA's Galileo spacecraft now in orbit around Jupiter are providing new evidence that thunderstorms may be an important source of energy for Jupiter's winds that blow at more than 500 kilometers per hour (about 300 miles per hour). The photos were taken by Galileo's solid state imager camera on June 26, 1996 at a range of about 1.4 million kilometers (about 860,000 miles).
The image at top is a mosaic of multiple images taken through near-infrared filters. False coloring in the image reveals cloud-top heights. High, thick clouds are white and high, thin clouds are pink. Low-altitude clouds are blue. The two black-and-white images at bottom are enlargements of the boxed area; the one on the right was taken 70 minutes after the image on the left. The arrows show where clouds have formed or dissipated in the short time between the images. The smallest clouds are tens of kilometers across.
On Earth, moist convection in thunderstorms is a pathway through which solar energy, deposited at the surface, is transported and delivered to the atmosphere. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology analyzing data from Galileo believe that water, the most likely candidate for what composes these clouds on Jupiter, may be more abundant at the site seen here than at the Galileo Probe entry site, which was found to be unexpectedly dry.
The Galileo mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. .
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the Galileo mission home page on the World Wide Web at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo.
Voir l'image PIA00506: Thunderheads on Jupiter sur le site de la NASA.
The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.
The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers, but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm's energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically. Such changes are demonstrated in high-resolution Wide Field and Planetary Cameras 1 & 2 images of Jupiter obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between 1992 and 1999(PIA01594 thru PIA01599 and PIA02400 thru PIA02402). This image was obtained in April 1997.
A montage representing the entire series of images was prepared by the Hubble Heritage Project team and is available atPIA01593.
Astronomers study weather phenomena on other planets in order to gain a greater understanding of our own Earth's climate. Lacking a solid surface, Jupiter provides us with a laboratory experiment for observing weather phenomena under very different conditions than those prevailing on Earth. This knowledge can also be applied to places in the Earth's atmosphere that are over deep oceans, making them more similar to Jupiter's deep atmosphere.
Voir l'image PIA02401: Hubble Views Ancient Storm in the Atmosphere of Jupiter - April, 1997 sur le site de la NASA.
North is at the top in both images. In the Red Spot image, the edge of the planet (limb) runs in a single arc from lower left to upper right, with dark space at lower right. In the polar image, the limb runs in two segments across the top right corner, with dark space at top right. Both images are mosaics; the offset of the individual frames of the mosaic produces the jagged border and the break in the polar limb.
These are false color images, constructed specifically to reveal cloud elevation differences. Three color channels are used. The red channel is an image taken at a near infrared wavelength where methane in Jupiter's atmosphere is strongly absorbing, and therefore gives no information about deep clouds but reveals high clouds. The green channel is a weaker methane band, and the blue channel is assigned to a wavelength where Jupiter's atmosphere is transparent. Thus red features indicate high hazes. A view near the edge of the planet accentuates the high hazes because of the slanting path of the line of sight.
The pronounced reddening near the edge of the planet in polar regions indicates a high stratospheric haze. Comparison with the Great Red Spot shows that such a high haze is absent at that latitude. Detailed analysis shows that a stratospheric haze exists at both latitudes but is approximately 50 km higher near the poles. It is likely that the high polar haze is produced by magnetospheric particles, which travel along magnetic field lines and bombard the upper atmosphere in polar regions. The low and mid latitude stratospheric haze are likely caused instead by photochemical reactions.
The Galileo mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the Galileo mission home page on the World Wide Web at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo..
Voir l'image PIA00522: Jupiter Stratospheric Haze Comparison sur le site de la NASA.
The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.
The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers, but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm's energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically. Such changes are demonstrated in high-resolution Wide Field and Planetary Cameras 1 & 2 images of Jupiter obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between 1992 and 1999(PIA01594 thru PIA01599 and PIA02400 thru PIA02402). This image was obtained in October 1996.
A montage representing the entire series of images was prepared by the Hubble Heritage Project team and is available atPIA01593.
Astronomers study weather phenomena on other planets in order to gain a greater understanding of our own Earth's climate. Lacking a solid surface, Jupiter provides us with a laboratory experiment for observing weather phenomena under very different conditions than those prevailing on Earth. This knowledge can also be applied to places in the Earth's atmosphere that are over deep oceans, making them more similar to Jupiter's deep atmosphere.
Voir l'image PIA02400: Hubble Views Ancient Storm in the Atmosphere of Jupiter - October, 1996 sur le site de la NASA.
Turbulent region west of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. This four image mosaic shows the Great Red Spot on Jupiter's eastern edge or limb. The images have been re-projected onto a square grid of latitude and longitude lines. The upper left tile of the four-tile mosaic is in green (559 nm) light, while the rest are in violet (415 nm). Variations in brightness between the images are due to the different filters and exposure times used in this observation.
The region west of the Great Red Spot is characterized by large, turbulent structures that rotate clockwise, in the opposite sense of the Great Red Spot. The centers of some of these structures are extremely bright, and may be giant (2000 km) clusters of cumulus clouds. Regions of large-scale turbulence are rare in Jupiter's otherwise very stable and organized atmosphere. North is to the top. Each pixel subtends a square about 29.5 kilometers on a side. The images were obtained on June 26, 1996 by the Solid State Imaging system on board NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo.
Voir l'image PIA00719: New Territory West of the Great Red Spot sur le site de la NASA.
The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.
The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers, but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm's energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically. Such changes are demonstrated in high-resolution Wide Field and Planetary Cameras 1 & 2 images of Jupiter obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between 1992 and 1999(PIA01594 thru PIA01599 and PIA02400 thru PIA02402). This image was obtained in May 1992.
A montage representing the entire series of images was prepared by the Hubble Heritage Project team and is available atPIA01593.
Astronomers study weather phenomena on other planets in order to gain a greater understanding of our own Earth's climate. Lacking a solid surface, Jupiter provides us with a laboratory experiment for observing weather phenomena under very different conditions than those prevailing on Earth. This knowledge can also be applied to places in the Earth's atmosphere that are over deep oceans, making them more similar to Jupiter's deep atmosphere.
Voir l'image PIA01595: Hubble Views Ancient Storm in the Atmosphere of Jupiter - May, 1992 sur le site de la NASA.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo..
Voir l'image PIA00832: Mosaic of Jupiter's Great Red Spot (727 nm) sur le site de la NASA.
The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.
The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers, but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm's energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically. Such changes are demonstrated in high-resolution Wide Field and Planetary Cameras 1 & 2 images of Jupiter obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between 1992 and 1999(PIA01594 thru PIA01599 and PIA02400 thru PIA02402). This image was obtained in July 1994.
A montage representing the entire series of images was prepared by the Hubble Heritage Project team and is available atPIA01593.
Astronomers study weather phenomena on other planets in order to gain a greater understanding of our own Earth's climate. Lacking a solid surface, Jupiter provides us with a laboratory experiment for observing weather phenomena under very different conditions than those prevailing on Earth. This knowledge can also be applied to places in the Earth's atmosphere that are over deep oceans, making them more similar to Jupiter's deep atmosphere.
Voir l'image PIA01596: Hubble Views Ancient Storm in the Atmosphere of Jupiter - July, 1994 sur le site de la NASA.
The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.
The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers, but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm's energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically. Such changes are demonstrated in high-resolution Wide Field and Planetary Cameras 1 & 2 images of Jupiter obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between 1992 and 1999(PIA01594 thru PIA01599 and PIA02400 thru PIA02402). This image was obtained in February 1995.
A montage representing the entire series of images was prepared by the Hubble Heritage Project team and is available atPIA01593.
Astronomers study weather phenomena on other planets in order to gain a greater understanding of our own Earth's climate. Lacking a solid surface, Jupiter provides us with a laboratory experiment for observing weather phenomena under very different conditions than those prevailing on Earth. This knowledge can also be applied to places in the Earth's atmosphere that are over deep oceans, making them more similar to Jupiter's deep atmosphere.
Voir l'image PIA01598: Hubble Views Ancient Storm in the Atmosphere of Jupiter - February, 1995 sur le site de la NASA.
Comparison of Jupiter's Great Red Spot at four wavelengths. These mosaics (6 frames each) show the appearance of the Great Red Spot in violet light (415 nm, upper left), infrared light (757 nm, upper right), and infrared light within both a weak (732 nm, lower left) and a strong (886 nm, lower right) methane absorption band. The images were taken within minutes of each other. Reflected sunlight at each of these wavelengths penetrates to different depths and is scattered or absorbed by different atmospheric constituents before detection by Galileo.
The violet mosaic reveals the relative abundances of chemicals that color Jupiter's atmosphere. The three infrared images respectively probe higher in Jupiter's atmosphere. The highest features, such as the diffuse haze that overlies the Great Red Spot and the small clouds to the northeast of it, are most apparent on the 886 nm mosaic. North is to the top in all frames. Each pixel subtends a square about 30 kilometers on a side. The images were obtained on June 26, 1996 by the Solid State Imaging system on board NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo.
Voir l'image PIA00721: The Great Red Spot at Four Different Wavelengths sur le site de la NASA.
This view of Jupiter was taken by Voyager 1. This image was taken through color filters and recombined to produce the color image. This photo was assembled from three black and white negatives by the Image Processing Lab at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL manages and controls the Voyager project for NASA's Office of Space Science.
Voir l'image PIA01384: Jupiter's Great Red Spot sur le site de la NASA.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo..
Voir l'image PIA00831: Mosaic of Jupiter's Great Red Spot (Violet Filter) sur le site de la NASA.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo..
Voir l'image PIA00829: Mosaic of Jupiter's Great Red Spot (in the near infrared) sur le site de la NASA.
The first discrete ammonia ice cloud positively identified on Jupiter is shown in this image taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Ammonia ice (light blue) is shown in clouds to the northwest (upper left) of the Great Red Spot (large red spot in middle of figure). This unusual cloud, inside the turbulent wake region near the Great Red Spot, is produced by powerful updrafts of ammonia-laden air from deep within Jupiter's atmosphere. These updrafts are generated by the turbulence induced in Jupiter's massive westward-moving air currents by the nearby Great Red Spot.
This false-color image was composed from several near-infrared color images obtained by the Galileo's near-infrared mapping spectrometer on June 26, 1996. Reddish-orange areas show high-level clouds, yellow areas depict mid-level clouds, and green areas depict lower-level clouds. Darker areas are cloud-free regions. Light blue depicts regions of middle-to-high-altitude-level ammonia ice clouds. The Great Red Spot, which has existed for at least 300 years, is the oldest and largest weather system in our solar system. It measures over 20,000 kilometers wide (over 12,400 miles), which is about twice as wide as Earth.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/galileo/. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/io.cfm.
The Galileo mission is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Voir l'image PIA00296: Jupiter's Great Red Spot sur le site de la NASA.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo..
Voir l'image PIA00830: Mosaic of Jupiter's Great Red Spot (in the near infrared) sur le site de la NASA.
Time Evolution of Jupiter's Great Red Spot in the 757 nm (near-infrared) filter of the Galileo Imaging system. These mosaics (6 frames each) were taken nine hours apart and reveal Jupiter's winds through the movements of cloud features. The Great Red Spot is a large atmospheric vortex (20,000 kilometers in its largest diameter) with counter-clockwise winds that reach 150 meters per second near its outer edges. It is embedded between a westward jet to the north and an eastward jet to the south. The central region of the Great Red Spot is relatively quiescent and shows little change over this time period.
The direction and velocity of Jupiter's winds are determined by measuring the displacements of cloud features in images such as these. Several competing theories seek to explain the existence and stability of Jovian atmospheric features, including the Great Red Spot. Wind measurements from Galileo images will help distinguish between competing theories. While at first glance the Great Red Spot appears similar to a terrestrial hurricane or mid-latitude storm, its enormous size and the lack of a solid surface on Jupiter complicate such comparisons. North is to the top in both frames. Each pixel subtends a square about 30 kilometers on a side. The images were obtained on June 26th, 1996.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.
This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo.
Voir l'image PIA00720: Time Series of the Great Red Spot (near-infrared filter) sur le site de la NASA.
The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.
The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers, but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm's energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically. Such changes are demonstrated in high-resolution Wide Field and Planetary Cameras 1 & 2 images of Jupiter obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between 1992 and 1999(PIA01594 thru PIA01599 and PIA02400 thru PIA02402). This image was obtained in February 1995.
A montage representing the entire series of images was prepared by the Hubble Heritage Project team and is available atPIA01593.
Astronomers study weather phenomena on other planets in order to gain a greater understanding of our own Earth's climate. Lacking a solid surface, Jupiter provides us with a laboratory experiment for observing weather phenomena under very different conditions than those prevailing on Earth. This knowledge can also be applied to places in the Earth's atmosphere that are over deep oceans, making them more similar to Jupiter's deep atmosphere.
Voir l'image PIA01599: Hubble Views Ancient Storm in the Atmosphere of Jupiter - October, 1995 sur le site de la NASA.
The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.
The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers, but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm's energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically. Such changes are demonstrated in high-resolution Wide Field and Planetary Cameras 1 & 2 images of Jupiter obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between 1992 and 1999(PIA01594 thru PIA01599 and PIA02400 thru PIA02402). This image was obtained in August 1994.
A montage representing the entire series of images was prepared by the Hubble Heritage Project team and is available atPIA01593.
Astronomers study weather phenomena on other planets in order to gain a greater understanding of our own Earth's climate. Lacking a solid surface, Jupiter provides us with a laboratory experiment for observing weather phenomena under very different conditions than those prevailing on Earth. This knowledge can also be applied to places in the Earth's atmosphere that are over deep oceans, making them more similar to Jupiter's deep atmosphere.
Voir l'image PIA01597: Hubble Views Ancient Storm in the Atmosphere of Jupiter - August, 1994 sur le site de la NASA.
The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.
The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers, but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm's energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically. Such changes are demonstrated in high-resolution Wide Field and Planetary Cameras 1 & 2 images of Jupiter obtained by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope between 1992 and 1999(PIA01594 thru PIA01599 and PIA02400 thru PIA02402). This image was obtained in June 1999.
A montage representing the entire series of images was prepared by the Hubble Heritage Project team and is available atPIA01593.
Astronomers study weather phenomena on other planets in order to gain a greater understanding of our own Earth's climate. Lacking a solid surface, Jupiter provides us with a laboratory experiment for observing weather phenomena under very different conditions than those prevailing on Earth. This knowledge can also be applied to places in the Earth's atmosphere that are over deep oceans, making them more similar to Jupiter's deep atmosphere.
Voir l'image PIA02402: Hubble Views Ancient Storm in the Atmosphere of Jupiter - June, 1999 sur le site de la NASA.