HubbleSite - Out of the ordinary... out of this world
About this image
This is the first true-color photograph of the giant planet Jupiter from the Wide Field Planetary Camera on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. All features in this image are cloud formations in the atmosphere of Jupiter, which contain small crystals of frozen ammonia and traces of colorful chemical compounds of carbon, sulfur, and phosphorus. The temperatures of the clouds are extremely cold, about -280 degrees F.
The photograph was generated in a computer by combining three separate WFIPC exposures, which were made in red, green and blue light at 4:34 a.m. EDT on May 28, 1991. It is part of a sequence of 45 exposures taken during an interval of 32 hours through five different colored filters as part of an ongoing study of the dynamic cloud and wind systems on Jupiter.
