3/2/79 4 million km (2.5 million mi)
High-speed wind currents in the mid-latitudes of Jupiter are shown in this high-resolution Voyager 1 photograph. The pale orange line running diagonally to the upper right is the high-speed north temperate current with a wind speed of about 120 meters per second (260 miles per hour), over twice as fast as severe hurricane winds on Earth. Toward the top of the picture, a weaker jet of approximately 30 meters per second (65 miles per hour) is characterized by wave patterns and cloud features that rotate in a clockwise manner.
3/2/79 4 million km (2.5 million mi)
The large brown-colored oval appearing in this Voyager 1 picture was selected as one of the targets to be photographed near closest approach to Jupiter because it is probably an opening in the upper cloud deck that exposes deeper, warmer cloud levels. Brown ovals (which can also be seen in the preceding and following photographs) are common features in Jupiter’s northern latitudes and have an average lifetime of one to two years.
6/28/79 10.3 million km (6.4 million mi)
Jupiter’s Equatorial Zone is the broad, orange band that traverses the center of this Voyager 2 picture. This zone is characterized by the wispy clouds along its northern edge. The brown oval was observed by Voyager 1 four months earlier, illustrating the stability of this type of feature in the Jovian atmosphere. In contrast, the turbulent region in the lower right of the picture, which lies just to the left of the Great Red Spot, shows features that are relatively short lived. With the exception of the cooler Great Red Spot, as colors range from white to orange to brown, we are generally looking at deeper and warmer layers in the Jovian atmosphere.
This infrared image of Jupiter was taken from Earth and shows heat radiating from deep holes in Jupiter’s clouds. Bright areas in the image are higher temperature regions than the dark areas and correspond to parts of the atmosphere that are relatively free of obscuring clouds. The Great Red Spot appears on the left limb, or edge of the planet, as a dark area encircled by a bright ring, indicating that the Spot is cooler than the surrounding region. The infrared image was recorded by the 200-inch Hale telescope on Mount Palomar in California.