Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/23
In Pictures: Huge hurricanes
In Pictures: Oh to be young again, Mr. President!
In Pictures: Facing the devastation of the Oklahoma tornadoes
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/22
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/21
In Pictures: Sinkholes around the world
In Pictures: What happened to the green revolution in Iran?
In Pictures: Sandy: Chronicle of an unrelenting storm
This photo, with highly exaggerated color, shows Jupiter's Great Red Spot (GRS). The GRS is actually a massive anti-cyclonic vortex large enough to engulf several Earths. It's the largest known vortex in the solar system.
Five spots - one colored white, one blue, and three black are scattered across the upper half of the planet. Closer inspection by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals that these spots are actually a rare alignment of three of Jupiter's largest moons - Io, Ganymede, and Callisto - across the planet's face. In this image, the telltale signatures of this alignment are the shadows (the three black circles) cast by the moons.
This is a false color image of Jupiter, with colors exaggerated to bring out details of the cloud structure and atmospheric dynamics.
This is an artist's impression of the Galileo probe descending into Jupiter's atmosphere. The probe was the first to sample the atmosphere of a gas planet. It measured temperature, pressure, chemical composition, cloud characteristics, sunlight and energy internal to the planet, and lightning. During its 58-minute life, the probe penetrated 124 miles into Jupiter's violent atmosphere before it was crushed, melted, and/or vaporized by the pressure and temperature of the atmosphere.
This image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 1, 2000, shows details of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and other features that were not visible in images taken earlier, when Cassini was farther from Jupiter.
This 'family portrait,' a composite of the Jovian system, includes the edge of Jupiter with its Great Red Spot, and Jupiter's four largest moons, known as the Galilean satellites. From top to bottom, the moons shown are Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. The Great Red Spot, a storm in Jupiter's atmosphere, is at least 300 years old. Winds blow counterclockwise around the Great Red Spot at about 250 miles per hour.
A view of Jupiter from its equator to its southern polar latitudes is seen in this undated image.
This image provided by NASA Tuesday May 1, 2007 shows an image of the planet Jupiter's moon, Io, as seen by the New Horizons spacecraft. A plume from a huge volcanic eruption can be seen at the north pole of the moon.
This Voyager 1 image of Jupiter's moon Callisto was taken from a distance of 217,000 miles. Callisto is about 3,000 miles in diameter (about the size of Mercury). The large "bulls-eye" at the top of the image is believed to be an impact basin formed early in Callisto's history.
This color map of Jupiter was constructed from images taken by the narrow-angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 11 and 12, 2000, as the spacecraft neared Jupiter during its flyby of the giant planet. Cassini was on its way to Saturn. They are the most detailed global color maps of Jupiter ever produced. In the original images, the smallest visible features are about 75 miles across. The maps are composed of 36 images: a pair of images covering Jupiter's northern and southern hemispheres was acquired in two colors every hour for nine hours as Jupiter rotated beneath the spacecraft.
The planet Jupiter has lost one of its belts - the Southern Equatorial Belt (SEB), made of mostly ammonia ice, phosphorus, and sulfur, has disappeared once again. The belt previously took a leave of absence in 1973, and again in the early 1990s, and scientists are baffled as to when the belt disappeared again - because the planet's been hiding on the other side of the sun since late 2009. But these photos by Anthony Wesley of Murrumbatemen Australia show Jupiter has reemerged mysteriously without the SEB once again.
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/23
In Pictures: Huge hurricanes
In Pictures: Oh to be young again, Mr. President!
In Pictures: Facing the devastation of the Oklahoma tornadoes
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/22
Photos of the Day: Photos of the day 05/21
In Pictures: Sinkholes around the world
In Pictures: What happened to the green revolution in Iran?
In Pictures: Sandy: Chronicle of an unrelenting storm
The planets beyond Mars exhibit the highest winds speeds of any other planets in the solar system. It's a puzzle, because less energy from the sun is available there to drive higher winds.
Astronomers have long marveled that the fastest wind speeds in the solar system have been clocked on the planets farthest from the sun.
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