Skip to main content

Beautiful images show the stripes of Jupiter in three different wavelengths

If you think Jupiter is beautiful in the visible light spectrum, wait until you see it in infrared and ultraviolet. Three new images of the planet have been released by the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab, showing the planet in all its beauty in various wavelengths.

The visible light image of Jupiter (directly below), captured by the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope, will be the most familiar. The image shows the details of the bands around the planet, formed by rotating clouds which are endlessly swirling and changing. You can also see the famous Great Red Spot in the lower half of the image to the left, which is the result of the largest storm in the solar system. The storm is over 10,000 miles wide and has wind speeds of up to 268 mph.

Recommended Videos

In the upper half of the image, you can also see a long, slim brown feature called a brown barge, a type of weather formation that stretches nearly 45,000 miles across the planet.

This visible-light image of Jupiter was created from data captured on 11 January 2017 using the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope.
This visible-light image of Jupiter was created from data captured on January 11, 2017, using the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA/ESA/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M.H. Wong and I. de Pater (UC Berkeley) et al. Acknowledgments: M. Zamani

In the infrared view of Jupiter (directly below), captured by the Gemini North telescope in Hawaii, you can see warmer areas of the planet indicated in brighter colors. There are four notable hot spots just above the equator, while in this wavelength the Great Red Spot appears dark because of its clouds.

This infrared view of Jupiter was created from data captured on 11 January 2017 with the Near-InfraRed Imager (NIRI) instrument at Gemini North in Hawaiʻi, the northern member of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. It is actually a mosaic of individual frames that were combined to produce a global portrait of the planet.
This infrared view of Jupiter was created from data captured on January 11, 2017, with the Near-InfraRed Imager (NIRI) instrument at Gemini North in Hawaii, the northern member of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab. It is actually a mosaic of individual frames that were combined to produce a global portrait of the planet. International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA, M.H. Wong (UC Berkeley) et al. Acknowledgments: M. Zamani

Finally, the stunning ultraviolet image directly below was also captured by Hubble. In this image, the Great Red Spot is dark but clearly visible. The infrared and visible light images pick up on the molecules that give the spot its distinctive color, called chromophores, and absorb blue and ultraviolet light.

This ultraviolet image of Jupiter was created from data captured on 11 January 2017 using the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope.
This ultraviolet image of Jupiter was created from data captured on January 11, 2017, using the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA/ESA/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M.H. Wong and I. de Pater (UC Berkeley) et al. Acknowledgments: M. Zamani

By comparing these three images, scientists are able to examine features they might miss if they looked in only one wavelength. They can also compare features across wavelengths, as all three images were captured at the same time, on January 11, 2017.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
A 200,000 light-year wide monster jet from the early universe
This artist’s illustration shows the largest radio jet ever found in the early Universe. The jet was first identified using the international Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) Telescope, a network of radio telescopes throughout Europe. Follow-up observations in the near-infrared with the Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph (GNIRS), and in the optical with the Hobby Eberly Telescope, were obtained to paint a complete picture of the radio jet and the quasar producing it.

Astronomers have discovered a truly ancient monster: a radio jet 200,000 light-years wide, originating from when the universe was less than 10% of its current age. Observed using the Gemini North and Hubble telescopes, astronomers are studying the jet to learn about how enormous black holes give off huge quantities of energy, and how they formed in the early universe.

The jet, called J1601+3102, has two points, or lobes, spreading out from a central point and covering a width twice the size of our entire galaxy. That makes this the largest radio jet ever seen in the early universe, and at its center is an object called a quasar: the very bright center of a galaxy, also called an active galactic nucleus (AGN), which contains a supermassive black hole at its heart.

Read more
Hubble snaps another gorgeous image of the Tarantula Nebula
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a dusty yet sparkling scene from one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy situated about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.

This gorgeous new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a bustling nearby star forming region called the Tarantula Nebula. Given its name due to its complex, web-like internal structure, this nebula is located in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud and is often studied by astronomers researching star formation and evolution.

This new image shows the edges of the nebula, further out from its center. In the middle of the nebula are enormous stars that are as much as 200 times the mass of the sun, but here on the outskirts the view is calmer.

Read more
Feast your eyes on 10 years of Hubble images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
This is a montage of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope views of our solar system's four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, each shown in enhanced color. The images were taken over nearly 10 years, from 2014 to 2024.

While the Hubble Space Telescope might be most famous for its images of beautiful and far-off objects like nebulae or distant galaxies, it also takes images of objects closer to home, including the planets right here in our own solar system. For the past 10 years, Hubble has been studying the outer planets in a project called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy), capturing regular images of each of the four outer planets so scientists can study their changes over time.

The planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are different in many ways from Earth, as they are gas giants and ice giants rather than rocky planets. But they do have some similar phenomena, such as weather that regularly changes, including epic events like storms that are so large they can be seen from space. Jupiter's Great Red Spot, for example, the big orange-red eye shape that is visible on most images of the planet, is an enormous storm larger than the width of the entire Earth and which has been raging for centuries.

Read more