This four image mosaic shows the Great Red Spot on Jupiter's eastern edge or limb. The images have been re-projected onto a square grid of latitude and longitude lines. Variations in brightness between the images are due to the different filters and exposure times used in this observation. The region west of the Great Red Spot is characterized by large, turbulent structures that rotate clockwise, in the opposite sense of the Great Red Spot. Regions of large-scale turbulence are rare in Jupiter's otherwise very stable and organized atmosphere.
North is to the top.
Each pixel subtends a square about 29.5 kilometers on a side. The images are of the limb from roughly latitude 5 south to latitude 50 south with north towards the top. The west longitude at the limb is about 20 degrees. Those impacts lofted large amounts of aerosols high into Jupiter's atmosphere, where they have settled out and been carried along with the prevailing winds over time. By attempting to identify the spatial distribution and amount of these aerosol particles, we hoped to learn about the winds and circulation patterns of Jupiter's stratosphere.