Mosaic of Jupiter's Great Red Spot (in the near infrared)

Great Red Spot of Jupiter as seen through the near-infrared (756 nm) filter of the Galileo imaging system. The image, taken approximately 10 hours after the first mosaic of the Great Red Spot, is a mosaic of six images that have been map-projected to a uniform grid of latitude and longitude. North is at the top. The mosaic was taken over an 80 second interval beginning at universal time 14 hours, 30 minutes, 23 seconds, on June 26, 1996. The Red Spot is 20,000 km long and has been followed by observers on Earth since the telescope was invented 300 years ago. It is a huge storm made visible by variations in the composition of the cloud particles. The Red Spot is not unique, but is simply the largest of a class of long-lived vortices, some of which are visible in the lower part of the image.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.

This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo.