Jupiter's Cosmic Portraits

High-resolution images of Jupiter captured by space missions, highlighting its bands and features like the Great Red Spot against a starry backdrop.

This is a montage of New Horizons images of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, taken during the spacecraft's Jupiter flyby in early 2007.

This true color mosaic of Jupiter was constructed from images taken by the narrow angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft, during its closest approach to the giant planet and is its most detailed portrait.

This photo from NASA's Voyager 2 was taken on Jun. 9, 1979 and is centered over the long-lived disturbed region west of the Great Red Spot (GRS).

This photo of Jupiter was taken by Voyager 1 on March 1, 1979. The region shown is just to the southeast of the Great Red Spot.

Ground-based astronomers will be playing a vital role in NASA's Juno mission. Images from the amateur astronomy community are needed to help the JunoCam instrument team predict what features will be visible when the camera's images are taken.

This is a montage of New Horizons images of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, taken during the spacecraft's Jupiter flyby in early 2007.

One moment in an ancient, orbital dance is caught in this color picture taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 7, 2000, just as two of Jupiter's four major moons, Europa and Callisto, were nearly perfectly aligned with each other.

Storms and Moons

This dramatic view of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its surroundings was obtained by NASA's Voyager 1 on Feb. 25, 1979. The colorful, wavy cloud pattern to the left of the Red Spot is a region of extraordinarily complex end variable wave motion.

On January 15, 2001, 17 days after it passed its closest approach to Jupiter, NASA's Cassini spacecraft looked back to see the giant planet as a thinning crescent.

See a jet stream speeding through Jupiter's atmosphere in this new view taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft. The jet stream, called Jet N2, was captured along the dynamic northern temperate belts of the gas giant planet. It is the white stream visible from top left to bottom right in the image. The color-enhanced image was taken at 10 34 p.m. PST on May 23 (1 34 a.m. EST on May 24), as Juno performed its 13th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 3,516 miles (5,659 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a northern latitude of 32.9 degrees. Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager. The view is a composite of several separate JunoCam images that were re-projected, blended, and healed.

False Color Image of Saturn's Clouds

Shadowing Saturn

A New Year for Jupiter and Io

This enhanced color Jupiter image, taken by the JunoCam imager on NASA's Juno spacecraft, showcases several interesting features on the apparent edge (limb) of the planet.

Gliese 667 Cb, a Neptune-like gas giant exoplanet.

A swing high above Saturn by NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealed this stately view of the golden-hued planet and its main rings. Saturn sports differently colored bands of weather in this image.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot and White Ovals

Streamers, swirls and vortices roll across the dynamic face of Saturn

Titan's Haze Up Close Seen by Cassini

Photograph of Saturn Constructed in False Color

NASA'S Voyager 1 took this picture of the planet Jupiter on Jan. 6, 1979, the first in its three-month-long, close-up investigation of the largest planet.

South Pole on Saturn

Jupiter, computer artwork.

Shadows on Saturn as Seen by Cassini

False Color View of Saturn's Storms Seen by Cassini

Pioneer Venus Occp. Image 00133 Venus

This color photo of Neptune's large satellite Triton was obtained on Aug. 24 1989. In reality, there is no part of Triton that would appear blue to the eye. The bright southern hemisphere of Triton, which fills most of this frame, is generally pink.

This false color mosaic shows a belt-zone boundary near Jupiter's equator. The images that make up the four quadrants of this mosaic were taken within a few minutes of each other. These images were taken on Nov. 5, 1996 by NASA's Galileo orbiter.

NASA Voyager 1 took this photo of Jupiter Feb. 1, 1979. Jupiter and io

Voyager 2 Image of Saturn

Key Players

The Golden Giant

These three images of Jupiter, taken through the narrow angle camera of NASA's Cassini spacecraft from a distance of 77.6 million kilometers (48.2 million miles) on October 8, reveal more than is apparent to the naked eye through a telescope.

Ominous Giant

A swirling storm somersaults through Jupiter's South Equatorial Belt in this view taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft. This feature -- not to be confused with the planet's iconic Great Red Spot -- is escorted by several smaller, reddish vortices above and to the left. This natural color view offers an approximation of what Jupiter would look like to human eyes from Juno's vantage point near the time of closest approach in its orbit. Jupiter's stunning appearance is due to its atmosphere of colorful cloud bands and spots. The vivid red and orange hues are created by chemicals of uncertain composition called chromophores. The image was taken at 10 28 p.m. PDT on July 15, 2018 (1 28 a.m. EDT on July 16), as the spacecraft performed its 14th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 4,900 miles (8,000 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, above a southern latitude of 36 degrees. Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.

Colorful swirling clouds in Jupiter's North Equatorial Belt practically fill this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. This is the closest image captured of the Jovian clouds during this recent flyby of the gas giant planet. The color-enhanced image was taken at 2 08 p.m. PDT (5 08 p.m. EDT) on Oct. 29, 2018 as the spacecraft performed its 16th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, at approximately 14 degrees north latitude. In other words, the spacecraft was about as close to Jupiter as San Francisco is to Chicago, which is quite close when racing over a planet that's 11 times wider than Earth. Citizen scientist Björn Jónsson created this image using data from the spacecraft's JunoCam imager.

Digital Illustration of the Planet Venus

A particularly strong jet stream churns through Saturn's northern hemisphere in this false-color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Clouds associated with the jet stream can be seen at upper right about a third of the way down from the top.

The southern edge of Jupiter's north polar region is captured in this view from NASA's Juno spacecraft. The scene prominently displays a long, brown oval known as a brown barge located within a polar jet stream, called Jet N4. This image was taken at 9 25 a.m. PST on Feb. 12, 2019 (12 25 p.m. EST), as the spacecraft performed its 18th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, above a latitude of approximately 44 degrees north.

NASA's Voyager 1 took this picture of the planet Jupiter on Saturday, Jan. 6, 1979.

This photo of Jupiter was taken by Voyager 1 on March 1, 1979.

P-21737 BW This picture shows a region of the southern hemisphere extending from the Great Red Spot to the south pole. The white oval is seen beneath the Great Red Spot, and several small scale spots are visible farther to the south. Some of these organized cloud spots have similiar morphologies, such as anticyclonic rotations and cyclonic regions to their west. The presence of the white oval causes the streamlines of the flow to bunch up between it and the Great Red Spot.

Jupiter, its Great Red Spot and three of its four largest satellites are visible in this photo taken Feb. 5, 1979, by Voyager 1. Io, Europa, and Callisto are seen against Jupiter's disk.

Southern Hemisphere in Ultraviolet

These two images of Neptune were taken by NASA's Voyager 2's narrow angle camera when the spacecraft was about 12 million km (7.5 million miles) from Neptune.

Venus Cloud Tops Viewed by Hubble. This is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet-light image of the planet Venus, taken on January 24 1995, when Venus was at a distance of 70.6 million miles (113.6 million kilometres) from Earth. Venus is covered with clouds made of sulphuric acid, rather than the water-vapour clouds found on Earth. These clouds permanently shroud Venus volcanic surface, which has been radar mapped by spacecraft and from Earth-based telescope.

This image of Jupiter's iconic Great Red Spot and surrounding turbulent zones was captured by NASA's Juno spacecraft. The color-enhanced image is a combination of three separate images taken on April 1 between 3 09 a.m. PDT (6 09 a.m. EDT) and 3 24 a.m. PDT (6 24 a.m. EDT), as Juno performed its 12th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was 15,379 miles (24,749 kilometers) to 30,633 miles (49,299 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a southern latitude spanning 43.2 to 62.1 degrees. Citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran processed this image using data from the JunoCam imager.

Image Compression

Jupiter's New Red Spot

The extrasolar planet Tau Bo_tis b reigns over the airless, baked and battered terrain of a hypothetical moon

The north pole of Saturn, in the fresh light of spring, is revealed in this color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The north pole was previously hidden from the gaze of Cassini.

Saturn's fourth-largest moon, Dione, can be seen through the haze of the planet's largest moon, Titan, in this view of the two posing before the planet and its rings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft chronicles the change of seasons as it captures clouds concentrated near the equator of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Methane clouds in the troposphere, the lowest part of the atmosphere, appear white here.

Pioneer Venus Occp. Image 00156

Planet jupiter, computer illustration.

Jupiter's Equatorial Zone in Exaggerated Color

Pioneer Venus Occp. Image 00117 Venus

This remarkably clear view from that flyby shows the moon's characteristically dark mid-latitudes, and more southern terrain than the Cassini spacecraft has usually been able to glimpse

Shimmering surface of a soap bubble, close-up

This view of Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a mosaic of two images taken by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. The Great Red Spot is a storm in Jupiter's atmosphere and is at least 300 years-old. The image was taken on June 26, 1996.

Saturn's moon Tethys disappears behind Titan as observed by Cassini on Nov. 26, 2009. Tethys is about 660 miles (1,070 kilometers) across. At about 3,200 miles (5,100 kilometers) wide, Titan is larger than the planet Mercury, and was much closer to Cassini than Tethys at the time of this image. Titan is planet-like in another way it's wrapped in a thick atmosphere, which can be clearly seen here where it overlaps icy Tethys in the distance beyond. Cassini captured this natural-color image at a distance of approximately 620,000 miles (1 million kilometers) from Titan. The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on Sept. 15, 2017.

The JunoCam imager on NASA's Juno spacecraft snapped this shot of Jupiter's northern latitudes on Dec. 11, 2016 at 8:47 a.m. PST (11:47 a.m. EST), as the spacecraft performed a close flyby of the gas giant planet.

Pioneer 11 image of Saturn and its moon Titan at the upper left. Date: 31 August 1979

A swirling, oval white cloud in Jupiter's South South Temperate Belt is captured in this image from NASA's Juno spacecraft. Known as White Oval A5, the feature is an anticyclonic storm. An anticyclone is a weather phenomenon where winds around the storm flow in the direction opposite to those of the flow around a region of low pressure. Juno took the two images used to produce this color-enhanced view on Sept. 6, 2018, at 6 45 p.m. PDT (9 45 p.m. EDT) and 6 58 p.m. PDT (9 58 p.m. EDT) as the Juno spacecraft performed its 15th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the images were taken, the spacecraft was about 25,000 miles (40,500 kilometers) to 39,000 miles (63,000 kilometers) from Jupiter's cloud tops, above a southern latitude spanning from about 54 to 66 degrees.

P-21736 BW This Voyager 2 pictures shows the Great Red Spot and the south equatorial belt extending into the equatorial region. At right is an interchange of material between the south equatorial belt and the equatorial zone. The clouds in this zone are more diffuse and do not display the structures seen in other locations. Considerable structure is evident within the Great Red Spot.

Although hidden from human eyes, NASA's Cassini spacecraft can spot these dark features on the surface of Titan dubbed 'Fensal' and 'Aztlan.' The dark features are believed to be vast dunes of particles that precipitated out of Titan's atmosphere.

Jupiter's Equatorial Region at 727 Nanometers (Time Set 2)

Cassini's Views of Titan: False Color Composite

A high resolution image of the Jovian mid-latitudes taken by Voyager 1 on March 2, 1979, shows distinctly differing characteristics of the planet's meteorology.

NASA image release July 12, 2011 Neptune 23 09 UT (June 25, 2011) Today, Neptune has arrived at the same location in space where it was discovered nearly 165 years ago. To commemorate the event, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken these "anniversary pictures" of the blue-green giant planet. Neptune is the most distant major planet in our solar system. German astronomer Johann Galle discovered the planet on September 23, 1846. At the time, the discovery doubled the size of the known solar system. The planet is 2.8 billion miles (4.5 billion kilometers) from the Sun, 30 times farther than Earth. Under the Sun's weak pull at that distance, Neptune plods along in its huge orbit, slowly completing one revolution approximately every 165 years. b To read more go a href= http //www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/neptune-circuit.html rel= nofollow here /a /b b a href= http //www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html rel= nofollow NASA Goddard Space Flight Center /a /b en

These two images of Venus from NASA's Galileo spacecraft show the global structure of cloud patterns at two different depths in the upper cloud layers.

A Gallery of Views of Saturn's Deep Clouds

Straining to make out the surface of Titan through its murky atmosphere, the Cassini spacecraft's wide angle camera manages to exploit one of the infrared spectral windows where the particulate smog is transparent enough for a peek

Digital Illustration of Jupiter's Rotation On Its Axis

This dual view of Jupiter was taken on August 23, when NASA's Juno spacecraft was 2.8 million miles (4.4 million kilometers) from the gas giant planet on the inbound leg of its initial 53.5-day capture orbit.

This montage compares New Horizons' best views of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon. LORRI.

Seasonal changes in the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon are captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which shows Titan with a slightly darker top half and a slightly lighter bottom half.

Saturn in Infrared Light

Jupiter, computer artwork.

These images from NASA's Juno mission show three different views of a Jupiter hot spot a break in Jupiter's cloud deck that provides a glimpse into Jupiter's deep atmosphere. Hot spots are flanked by clouds and active storms, and fueled by high-altitude electrical discharges recently discovered by Juno known as shallow lightning. The pictures were taken by the JunoCam imager during its 29th close flyby of the giant planet on Sept. 16, 2020. Not all of Jupiter's clouds are the same. The planet is composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, and the vivid colors that appear in thick bands across Jupiter are likely plumes of sulfur compounds and phosphorus-containing gases rising from the planet's warmer interior. The small, bright cloud feature seen here is likely made of ammonia ice and water ice rising to a higher altitude than the surrounding features. The original JunoCam images used to produce these views were taken from altitudes between about 2,700 and 4,500 miles (4,300 and 7,200 ki

Jupiter, illustration

This comparison view shows a common, large vortex on Saturn as it plows through the atmosphere. The right image was taken about two Saturn rotations -- about 20 hours -- after the left image

These two images, taken with NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, capture two different phases of this wave oscillation at Saturn's equator.

Images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft using three different filters reveal cloud structures and movements at different depths in the atmosphere around Jupiter's south pole.

These color maps of Jupiter were constructed from images taken by the narrow-angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft as the spacecraft neared Jupiter during its flyby of the giant planet.

Range 530,000 km (330,000 mi.) This color photo of Neptune's large satellite Triton has a resolution of about 10 km (6.2 mi), sufficient to begin to show topographic detail. The image was made from pictures taken through the green, violet and ultraviolet filters. In this technique, regions that are highly reflective in the ultraviolet appear blue in color. In reality, there is no part of Triton that would appear blue to the eye. The bright southern hemisphere of Triton, which fills most of this frame, is generally pink in tone as is the even brighter equatorial band. The darker regions north of the equator also tend to be pink or reddish in color.

Bright mid-latitude clouds near the bottom of this view hint at the ongoing cycling of methane on Titan

NASA's Juno spacecraft provides a never-before-seen perspective on Jupiter's south pole. 2016

Planet-Venus-Photographed-by-Pioneer

Mosaic of a belt-zone boundary near Jupiter's equator as seen by NASA's Galileo orbiter in 1996.

JunoCam images aren't just for art and science -- sometimes they are processed to bring a chuckle. This image, processed by citizen scientist Jason Major, is titled Jovey McJupiterface. By rotating the image 180 degrees and orienting it from south up, two white oval storms turn into eyeballs, and the face of Jupiter is revealed. The original image was acquired by JunoCam on NASA's Juno spacecraft on May 19, 2017 at 11 20 a.m. PT (2 20 p.m. ET) from an altitude of 12,075 miles (19,433 kilometers).

HD 85512 b is a rocky super-Earth exoplanet.

Saturn's Ultraviolet Auroras Seen By Hubble Space Telecope

The biggest, most long-lasting Saturnian storm seen by either NASA's Cassini or Voyager spacecraft roils the atmosphere of the gas giant in this nearly true-color mosaic of Cassini images.

Oval cloud systems of this type are often associated with chaotic cyclonic systems such as the balloon-shaped vortex seen here between the well-formed ovals. These images were taken on February 19, 1997 by NASA's Galileo orbiter.

The planet Saturn as seen from space. Base: Andrews Air Force Base State: Maryland (MD) Country: United States Of America (USA)

This mosaic of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter from NASA's Galileo orbiter was taken over a 76 second interval beginning at universal time 14 hours, 31 minutes, 52 seconds on June 26, 1996.

Titan's hazy orange globe hangs before the Cassini spacecraft, partly illuminated -- a world with many mysteries yet to be uncovered.

Jupiter's Equatorial Region in the Near-Infrared and Violet (Time Set 2)

of 2