Clouds Dance in Jupiter Movie Clips

Two short movie clips of Jupiter based on images taken by
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft show dynamic clouds in action on the
giant planet.

One clip, from Cassini images taken at uneven time
intervals over a five-day period in October, catches winds
swirling counterclockwise around Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.
Dark and light bands that form horizontal stripes around the
planet can be seen rushing in opposite directions to each
other. The other clip shows the reverse side of Jupiter, and
smooths out the motion of the bands by including some
intermediate false frames between real images taken by
Cassini.

The movies are available from NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/jupiter

and from the web site of the Cassini Imaging Science team at
the University of Arizona, Tucson, at

http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ .

Cassini will pass most closely to Jupiter, at about 10
million kilometers (6 million miles) away, on Dec. 30. It will
use a boost from Jupiter’s gravity to reach its ultimate
destination, Saturn. While near Jupiter, it is studying that
planet’s atmosphere, magnetic field and rings in collaboration
with NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, which has been orbiting
Jupiter since Dec. 7, 1995. More information on the joint
Cassini-Galileo observations is available at

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby .

Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the
Cassini and Galileo missions for NASA’s Office of Space
Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena.