1/10/79 535,000 km (332 million mi)
This Voyager 1 picture was also taken the same day, about one hour after the infrared image.
3/5/79 515,000 km (320,000 mi)
The largest aurora ever observed, nearly 29,000 kilometers (18,000 miles) long, appears in this Voyager 1 photograph, taken on the dark side of Jupiter six hours after closest encounter. The auroral lights are brighter than any northern lights seen on Earth. Jupiter’s north pole is approximately midway along the auroral arc. This timed exposure of the aurora also shows what appear to be lightning storms several thousand kilometers below the aurora. The strength of the lightning bolts is comparable to that of superbolts seen near cloud tops above Earth. Lightning had been suspected to exist on Jupiter, but at lower levels in the atmosphere.
3/4/79 1.2 million km (750,000 mi)
The first evidence of a ring around Jupiter is seen in this photograph taken by Voyager 1. This photograph was part of a sequence planned to search for such rings around Jupiter. The multiple image of the extremely thin, faint ring appears as a broad light band crossing the center of the picture. This multiple image and the elongated, wavy motion of the background stars are due to the 11-minute, 12-second exposure and the very slow natural oscillation of the spacecraft. The ring, which is in Jupiter’s equatorial plane, is invisible from Earth because of its thinness and transparency and because of Jupiter’s brightness. The black dots in the picture are calibration points in the camera.
Because of Voyager 1’s discovery of a ring around Jupiter, Voyager 2 was programmed to take additional pictures of the ring. These three Voyager 2 images show Jupiter’s ring in progressively higher resolution. The pictures were taken when Jupiter was eclipsed by the Sun, and the ring appears unusually bright because of the forward scattering of sunlight by small ring particles.