Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter. Jupiter is a gas giant planet, the fifth planet from the Sun and is the largest in the solar system. The Great Red Spot and bands of clouds are seen in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere. The colours, and their changes, indicate ongoing processes in Jupiter's atmosphere. The bands are created by differences in the thickness and height of the ammonia ice clouds. The bands of clouds, which flow in opposite directions at various latitudes, result from different atmospheric pressures. Lighter bands rise higher and have thicker clouds than the darker bands. The reddish brown worm-shaped feature below the Great Red Spot is a low-pressure area where winds are turning in the opposite direction from the Red Spot. Image taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 when Jupiter was 400 million miles from Earth, near opposition, directly opposite the Sun in the sky. | |
Licence : | Droits gérés |
Crédit: | Science Photo Library / NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) and M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) |
Taille de l’image : | 3000 px × 3002 px |
Model Release : | Non requis |
Property Release : | Non requis |
Restrictions : | - |