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An artificially colored view of Jupiter as seen in ultraviolet light. In addition to the Great Red Spot, which appears blue, another oval feature can be seen in the brown haze at Jupiter's south pole. The oval, an area of concentrated haze, is possibly the result of mixing generated by a vortex higher up in the planet's ionosphere. These dark UV ovals also appear periodically at the north pole, though less often.
Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, a gas giant with powerful storms. With a diameter of 143,000 km, Jupiter is 11 times wider than Earth and capable of swallowing all of the other planets in the Solar System and still have room to spare. It is composed or hydrogen and helium and lacks a solid surface. It’s atmosphere has bands of alternating colour with strong winds, hurricanes and lightning storms.
The atmosphere of Jupiter is a complex system of thick clouds, storms and high winds. The hydrogen makes up about 90% of the atmosphere with helium the bulk of the remainder plus trace amounts of methane, water vapour and other compounds. The belts in the atmosphere appear to alternate between lighter and darker colours driven by different temperatures, chemical compositions and wind speeds that reach up to 640 km/hr.
The newly released ultraviolet image reveals strange features around the polar regions. The oval shaped features are Earth-sized and only visible in the ultraviolet wavelengths. The ovals seems to consistently appear at a slightly lower latitude than the auroral zones around the poles. In the image, the ovals seem dark in colour due to absorption of ultraviolet radiation, more so than the brighter surrounding regions.
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