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The first color movie of Jupiter from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows what it would look like to peel the entire globe of Jupiter, stretch it out on a wall into the form of a rectangular map, and watch its atmosphere evolve with time.
Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The cloud pattern on Jupiter is the visible system of colored cloud tops in the atmosphere of the planet Jupiter, remarkable for its stability. Astronomers have given names to parts of this pattern, using the word zone for the light stripes, and belt for the dark stripes, along various latitudes. The pattern and intensity of its belts and zones are famously variable, often changing markedly from opposition to opposition.

The normal pattern of bands and zones are sometimes disrupted for a period of time, and Astronomers call these events "Disturbances". For example, the longest lived disturbance in recorded history was a "Southern Tropical Disturbance" (STropD) from 1901 until 1939, discovered by Percy B. Molesworth on February 28, 1901. It created a darkened feature over some longitude area in the normally bright Southern Tropical zone.

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