Portal:Jupiter/Image

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Selected images

Cloud bands are clearly visible on Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS.

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"This false-color view of Jupiter was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2006. The red color traces high-altitude haze blankets in the polar regions, equatorial zone, the Great Red Spot, and a second red spot below and to the left of its larger cousin. The smaller red spot is approximately as wide as Earth." Credit: NASA, ESA, I. de Pater and M. Wong (University of California, Berkeley).

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Jupiter is imaged with the Stockholm Infrared Camera (SIRCA) in the H₂O band. Credit: M. Gålfalk, G. Olofsson and H.-G. Florén, Nordic Observatory Telescope (NOT).

The image clearly shows that water vapor is plentiful in the Jovian atmosphere.

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This image of Jupiter shows concentrations of auroral X-rays near the north and south magnetic poles. The Chandra X-ray Observatory accumulated X-ray counts from Jupiter for its entire 10-hour rotation on December 18, 2000. Credit: NASA/CXC/SWRI/G.R.Gladstone et al.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory accumulated X-ray counts from Jupiter for its entire 10-hour rotation on December 18, 2000. Note that X-rays from the entire globe of Jupiter are detected.

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This ultraviolet image of Jupiter is taken by the Wide Field Camera of the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/Hubble Space Telescope Comet Team.

The image shows Jupiter's atmosphere at a wavelength of 2550 Angstroms after many impacts by fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. The most recent impactor is fragment R which is below the center of Jupiter (third dark spot from the right). This photo was taken 3:55 EDT on July 21, about 2.5 hours after R's impact. A large dark patch from the impact of fragment H is visible rising on the morning (left) side. Proceeding to the right, other dark spots were caused by impacts of fragments Q1, R, D and G (now one large spot), and L, with L covering the largest area of any seen thus far. Small dark spots from B, N, and Q2 are visible with careful inspection of the image. The spots are very dark in the ultraviolet because a large quantity of dust is being deposited high in Jupiter's stratosphere, and the dust absorbs sunlight.

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Full-disc view of Jupiter is in natural color in April 2014. Credit: Hubble Space Telescope.

There is anecdotal evidence that people had seen the Galilean moons of Jupiter before telescopes were invented.

Also, note the great red spot has shrunk!

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This is a Voyager 1 image through the violet filter showing Jupiter with its satellite Io visible at lower left. Credit: NASA.

Here is a "Voyager 1 image showing Jupiter with its satellite Io visible at lower left. Jupiter is 140,000 km in diameter and Io is 3600 km across. This image was taken with the narrow angle camera using the violet filter from a distance of 25 million km on 9 February 1979. North is at about 11:00 (Voyager 1, 15672.37)".

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This image of Jupiter is a composite of three color images taken on Nov. 16, 2010, by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/IRTF.

"This image of Jupiter is a composite of three color images taken on Nov. 16, 2010, by NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility. The particles lofted by the initial outbreak are easily identified in green as high altitude particles at the upper right, with a second outbreak to the lower left."

"Earlier this year, one of Jupiter’s stripes went missing. The Southern Equatorial Band started to get lighter and paler, and eventually disappeared. Now, follow-up images from both professional and amateur astronomers are showing some activity in the area of the SEB, and scientists now believe the vanished dark stripe is making a comeback."

“The reason Jupiter seemed to ‘lose’ this band – camouflaging itself among the surrounding white bands – is that the usual downwelling winds that are dry and keep the region clear of clouds died down. One of the things we were looking for in the infrared was evidence that the darker material emerging to the west of the bright spot was actually the start of clearing in the cloud deck, and that is precisely what we saw.”

"This white cloud deck is made up of white ammonia ice. When the white clouds float at a higher altitude, they obscure the missing brown material, which floats at a lower altitude. Every few decades or so, the South Equatorial Belt turns completely white for perhaps one to three years, an event that has puzzled scientists for decades. This extreme change in appearance has only been seen with the South Equatorial Belt, making it unique to Jupiter and the entire solar system."

"The white band wasn’t the only change on the big, gaseous planet. At the same time, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot became a darker red color."

"The color of the spot – a giant storm on Jupiter that is three times the size of Earth and a century or more old – will likely brighten a bit again as the South Equatorial Belt makes its comeback."

"The South Equatorial Belt underwent a slight brightening, known as a “fade,” just as NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft was flying by on its way to Pluto in 2007. Then there was a rapid “revival” of its usual dark color three to four months later. The last full fade and revival was a double-header event, starting with a fade in 1989, revival in 1990, then another fade and revival in 1993. Similar fades and revivals have been captured visually and photographically back to the early 20th century, and they are likely to be a long-term phenomenon in Jupiter’s atmosphere."

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At left, Photograph of Jupiter's enormous Great Red Spot in 1879 from "A History of Astronomy in the 19th Century". Credit: Agnes Clerk and NASA.

The Great Red Spot (GRS) is a persistent anticyclonic storm, 22° south of Jupiter's equator, which has lasted for at least 194 years and possibly longer than 359 years. The storm is large enough to be visible through Earth-based telescopes. Its dimensions are 24–40,000 km west–to–east and 12–14,000 km south–to–north. The spot is large enough to contain two or three planets the size of Earth. At the start of 2004, the Great Red Spot had approximately half the longitudinal extent it had a century ago, when it was 40,000 km in diameter. The Great Red Spot's latitude has been stable for the duration of good observational records, typically varying by about a degree.

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Jupiter appears in pastel colors in this photo because the observation was taken in near-infrared light. Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona).

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This is an infrared image of Jupiter taken by the ESO's Very Large Telescope. Credit: ESO/F. Marchis, M. Wong, E. Marchetti, P. Amico, S. Tordo.

The image is "of Jupiter taken in infrared light on the night of [August 17, 2008,] with the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) prototype instrument mounted on ESO's Very Large Telescope. This false color photo is the combination of a series of images taken over a time span of about 20 minutes, through three different filters (2, 2.14, and 2.16 microns). The image sharpening obtained is about 90 milli-arcseconds across the whole planetary disc, a real record on similar images taken from the ground. This corresponds to seeing details about 186 miles wide on the surface of the giant planet. The great red spot is not visible in this image as it was on the other side of the planet during the observations. The observations were done at infrared wavelengths where absorption due to hydrogen and methane is strong. This explains why the colors are different from how we usually see Jupiter in visible-light. This absorption means that light can be reflected back only from high-altitude hazes, and not from deeper clouds. These hazes lie in the very stable upper part of Jupiter's troposphere, where pressures are between 0.15 and 0.3 bar. Mixing is weak within this stable region, so tiny haze particles can survive for days to years, depending on their size and fall speed. Additionally, near the planet's poles, a higher stratospheric haze (light blue regions) is generated by interactions with particles trapped in Jupiter's intense magnetic field."

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The image shows Jupiter in the infrared. Credit: NASA.

Here in the infrared band the Great Red Spot (on the lower left) is almost unseen.

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A radio image of Jupiter from the VLA at three wavelengths: 2 cm in blue, 3 cm in gold, and 6 cm in red. Credit: Imke de Pater, Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley), Robert J. Sault (Univ. Melbourne).

"We in essence created a three-dimensional picture of ammonia gas in Jupiter’s atmosphere, which reveals upward and downward motions within the turbulent atmosphere."

"The radio map shows ammonia-rich gases rising into and forming the upper cloud layers: an ammonium hydrosulfide cloud at a temperature near 200 Kelvin (minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit) and an ammonia-ice cloud in the approximately 160 Kelvin cold air (minus 170 degrees Fahrenheit). These clouds are easily seen from Earth by optical telescopes."

"Conversely, the radio maps show ammonia-poor air sinking into the planet, similar to how dry air descends from above the cloud layers on Earth."

"The map also shows that hotspots – so-called because they appear bright in radio and thermal infrared images – are ammonia-poor regions that encircle the planet like a belt just north of the equator. Between these hotspots are ammonia-rich upwellings that bring ammonia from deeper in the planet."

"With radio, we can peer through the clouds and see that those hotspots are interleaved with plumes of ammonia rising from deep in the planet, tracing the vertical undulations of an equatorial wave system."

"We now see high ammonia levels like those detected by Galileo from over 100 kilometers deep, where the pressure is about eight times Earth’s atmospheric pressure, all the way up to the cloud condensation levels."

"We now see fine structure in the 12 to 18 gigahertz band, much like we see in the visible, especially near the Great Red Spot, where we see a lot of little curly features. Those trace really complex upwelling and downwelling motions there."

"Jupiter’s rotation once every 10 hours usually blurs radio maps, because these maps take many hours to observe. But we have developed a technique to prevent this and so avoid confusing together the upwelling and downwelling ammonia flows, which had led to the earlier underestimate."

"The pink glow surrounding the planet [in the image on the right] is synchrotron radiation produced by spiraling electrons trapped in Jupiter’s magnetic field. Banded details on the planet’s disk probe depths of 30-90 km below the clouds. This image is averaged from 10 hours of VLA data, so the fine details seen in the other maps are smeared here by the planet’s rotation."

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Jupiter's northern half (its northern hemisphere) is shown, from pole to equator, in this map produced from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft in 2000. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

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Jupiter's southern half (its southern hemisphere) is shown, from pole to equator, in this map produced from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft in 2000. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

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This image shows Jupiter's south pole, as seen by NASA's Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles.{{free media}}

Here is "Jupiter's south pole, as seen by NASA's Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in diameter. Multiple images taken with the JunoCam instrument on three separate orbits were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color, and stereographic projection."

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This map shows the distribution of water in the stratosphere of Jupiter as measured with the Herschel space observatory. Credit: Water map: ESA/Herschel/T. Cavali et al.; Jupiter image: NASA/ESA/Reta Beebe (New Mexico State University).

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SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, captured its "first light" images on May 26, from an altitude of 35,000 feet. Credit: Infrared - NASA, USRA, DSI, Cornell Univ. / Visible - Anthony Wesley.

"SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, captured its "first light" images on May 26, from an altitude of 35,000 feet. While flying above most of planet Earth's infrared-absorbing water vapor, SOFIA's premier infrared views of the cosmos included this remarkable false-color image (right panel) of Jupiter. For comparison, on the left is a recent, ground-based visible light image. Both show our solar system's ruling gas giant without its dark southern equatorial belt (normally seen in the upper hemisphere in this orientation). That familiar feature faded from view early in May. But the bright white stripe in SOFIA's image is a region of Jupiter's clouds transparent to infrared light, offering a glimpse below the cloud tops."

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This view is unique to Juno of Jupiter from the south which makes the Great Red Spot appear as though it is in northern territory. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstad/Sean Doran.{{fairuse}}

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