On 29 December 2000, just over a day before in the closest approach to Jupiter, Cassini's narrow angle camera took a number of high-resolution images at a distance of about 6.2 million miles, covering the whole planet. This enabled the Cassini imaging team to provide this new global vision.
"The imaging team wanted very much to take the ultimate picture of Jupiter," said Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "The one that would show Jupiter in all its intricate and glorious complexity, the one that would knock your socks off. We managed to wedge this series of images in among all the pressing scientific observations going on near Cassini's closest approach to Jupiter, and we're very glad now that we did."
The mosaic consists of 27 images. Although Cassini's camera sees more colors than people can The Jupiter's colors in this new vision approximate how the human eye can see.
"Jupiter really is a planet of clouds," said Dr. Ashwin Vasavada, a Cassini imaging team associate and planetary scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who composited the mosaic. "You can stare for hours at the different forms, patterns and colors on this image. Bright, white thunderstorms punctuate several of Jupiter's bands, while the Great Red Spot, a vortex big enough to swallow Earth, leaves a large, turbulent wake behind it. Jupiter shows us what an atmosphere is capable of on the grandest scale."
"These images were taken at a little over 10 million kilometers (6.2 million miles) from Jupiter, but once we get into orbit at Saturn, the spacecraft is closer to Saturn, so our images taken in the Saturnian system should be absolutely spectacular," said Robert Mitchell, Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.
Additional information about Cassini-Huygens is online.
The Space Science Institute is a non-profit organization of scientists and educators engaged in research in the areas of astrophysics, planetary science and the earth sciences, and in integrating research with education and public outreach.