Jupiter Postcard June 7, 2010

A Hubble picture from July 23, 2009, captures the planet's common appearance over the past several decades with alternating zones of high altitude ammonia ice crystal clouds (white strips) and belts of lower altitude material (dark strip). The image was taken to study a wispy patch of dark debris in the far Southern Hemisphere caused by the suspected explosion of an asteroid plunging into the lower atmosphere on July 19, 2009. Credits:Credit: NASA, ESA, M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), A.A. Simon-Miller (Goddard Space Flight Centre), H.B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), and the Jupiter Impact Science Team