Dynamics of Jupiter's long-lived White Ovals

NOTE: This JPEG image is made available in order to share with the public the excitement of new discoveries being made via the NASA/JPL Galileo spacecraft. Galileo scientists are in the process of calibrating and validating this data. The full digital image necessary for scientific analysis will be released within one year of receipt of this orbit's last data.

This image is available only on the WWW; it is not available in hardcopy or other forms.

Three sets of observations, each taken one hour apart, illustrate dynamics in this region of Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere. The near-infrared continuum filter (756 nanometers) shows the features of Jupiter's main visible cloud deck. 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. This system is centered near 30 degrees south planetocentric latitude and 100 degrees west longitude and rotates in a clockwise sense about its center. The oval shaped vortices in the upper half of the mosaic are two of the three long-lived White Ovals that formed to the south of the Red Spot in the 1930's and, like the Red Spot, rotate in a counterclockwise sense. The east to west dimension of the leftmost White Oval is 9000 kilometers (km). (The diameter of the Earth is 12,756 km.) The White Ovals drift in longitude relative to one another, and are presently restricting the cyclonic structure.

In the lower right corner, the smaller oval and its accompanying cyclonic system are moving eastward at about 0.4 degrees per day relative to the larger ovals. The interaction between these two cyclonic storm systems is producing high, thick cumulus-like clouds in the southern part of the more northerly trapped system.

North is at the top of this mosaic. The smallest resolved features are tens of kilometers in size. These images were taken on February 19, 1997, at a range of 1.1 million kilometers by the Solid State Imaging (CCD) system aboard NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

Launched in October 1989, Galileo entered orbit around Jupiter on December 7, 1995. The spacecraft's mission is to conduct detailed studies of the giant planet, its largest moons and the Jovian magnetic environment. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.

This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo.

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