Among the many legacies of the Galileo spacecraft are incredible close-up views
of Jupiter's colorful clouds.
Some of the oval cloud systems in this image, which covers an area south of
the Great Red Spot, formed in the 1930s and exist still today. They rotate counterclockwise.
The white oval at the left of the image is 5,600 miles wide (9,000 kilometers).
Earth's diameter is 7,926 miles (12,756 kilometers).
The image is a mosaic of several observations in different colors, designed
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. Dark purple most likely represents a high haze overlying a clear
deep atmosphere.
Galileo is the first spacecraft to distinguish cloud layers on Jupiter. This
photo was made in 1997. The craft was directed to its demise Sunday, hurtling
into the very clouds it had photographed so well.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Galileo
