File:Jupiter gany.jpg

English: Voyager 1 took this photo of the planet Jupiter on January 24, while the spacecraft was a little over a month away from closest approach, at a distance of over 40 million km (25 million miles). As the spacecraft draws closer to the planet (about 1 million kilometers a day) more details are emerging in the turbulent clouds. The Great Red Spot, a giant circulating feature in the atmosphere, has been observed for hundreds of years. It shows prominently below center, surrounded by what scientists call a remarkably complex region of the giant planet's atmosphere. An elongated yellow cloud within the Great Red Spot is swirling around the spot's interior boundary in a counterclockwise direction with a period of a little less than six days, confirming the whirlpool-like circulation that astronomers have suspected from ground-based photographs. Ganymede, Jupiter's largest satellite, is at the lower left. Ganymede is a planet-sized body larger than Mercury. Jupiter is 71,492 km in diameter and North is at 11:30. This color photo (Voyager 1, P-20945) was assembled at Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Image Processing Lab from three black and white images taken through filters.