PHOTO FILE NO.: STScI-PF95-18  RELEASE DATE:  March 31, 1995


             HUBBLE TRACKS JUPITER STORMS

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is following dramatic and
rapid changes in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere that will
be critical for targeting observations made by the Galileo
space probe when it arrives at the giant planet later this
year.

This Hubble image provides a detailed look at a unique
cluster of three white oval-shaped storms that lie
southwest (below and to the left) of Jupiter's Great Red
Spot.  The appearance of the clouds, as imaged on February
13, 1995 is considerably different from their appearance
only seven months earlier.  Hubble shows these features
moving closer together as the Great Red Spot is carried
westward by the prevailing winds while the white ovals are
swept eastward. (This change in appearance is not an effect
of last July's comet Shoemaker- Levy 9 collisions with
Jupiter.)

The outer two of the white storms formed in the late
1930s.  In the centers of these cloud systems the air is
rising, carrying fresh ammonia gas upward.  New, white ice
crystals form when the upwelling gas freezes as it reaches
the chilly cloud top level where temperatures are -200
degrees Fahrenheit (-130 degrees Centigrade).

The intervening white storm center, the ropy structure to
the left of the ovals, and the small brown spot have formed
in low pressure cells.  The white clouds sit above
locations where gas is descending to lower, warmer
regions.  The extent of melting of the white ice exposes
varied amounts of Jupiter's ubiquitous brown haze.  The
stronger the down flow, the less ice, and the browner the
region.

A scheduled series of Hubble observations will help target
regions of interest for detailed scrutiny by the Galileo
spacecraft, which will arrive at Jupiter in early December
1995.  Hubble will provide a global view of Jupiter while
Galileo will obtain close-up images of structure of the
clouds that make up the large storm systems such as the
Great Red Spot and white ovals that are seen in this
picture.

This color picture is assembled from a series of images
taken by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, in planetary
camera mode, when Jupiter was at a distance of 519 million
miles (961 million kilometers) from Earth.  These images
are part of a set of data obtained by a Hubble Space
Telescope (HST) team headed by Reta Beebe of New Mexico
State University.

Credit:  Reta Beebe, Amy Simon (New Mexico State Univ.),
and NASA

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The image file name is:    JupiterWS.gif         Color Jupiter