NASAのインスタグラム(nasagoddard) - 12月11日 05時26分

Cassini’s view of Jupiter’s southern hemisphere

This Cassini image shows Jupiter from an unusual perspective. If you were to float just beneath the giant planet and look directly up, you would be greeted with this striking sight: red, bronze and white bands encircling a hazy south pole. The multicoloured concentric layers are broken in places by prominent weather systems such as Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot, visible towards the upper left, chaotic patches of cloud and pale white dots. Many of these lighter patches contain lightning-filled thunderstorms.

Jupiter has very dramatic weather – the planet’s axis is not as tilted (towards or away from the Sun) as much as Earth’s so it does not have significant seasonal changes, but it does have a thick and tumultuous atmosphere filled with raging storms and chaotic cloud systems.

These clouds, formed from dense layers of ammonia crystals, are tugged, stretched and tangled together by Jupiter’s turbulence and strong winds, creating vortices and hurricane-like storms with wind speeds of up to 360 km per hour.

The Great Red Spot is actually an anticyclone that has been violently churning for hundreds of years. It was at one stage large enough to contain several Earth-sized planets but recent images from the Hubble Space Telescope show it to be shrinking. There are other similarly striking storms raging in both Jupiter’s cool upper atmosphere and hotter lower layers, including a Great Dark Spot and Oval BA, more affectionately nicknamed Red Spot Jr.

Read more: http://bit.ly/1vFwQCt

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute #space #Jupiter

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