Image: Jupiter on 2010-06-07 (captured by the Hubble Space Telescope)

Description: A Hubble picture from June 7, 2010, reveals a slightly higher altitude layer of white ammonia ice crystal clouds that appears to obscure the deeper, darker belt clouds of the SEB. The team predicts that these clouds should clear out in a few months. Hubble also resolved a string of dark spots farther south of the vanished belt. Based on past observations, the Hubble Jupiter team expects to see similar spots appear in the SEB, right before its white clouds clear out in a few months. The giant stormy planet Jupiter has gone through a makeover, as seen in the image below, taken nearly 11 months earlier. Several months ago the dark Southern Equatorial Belt (SEB) vanished. The last time this happened was in the early 1970s, when we didn't have powerful enough telescopes to study the change in detail.

This natural color planet portrait was taken in visible light with Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3.
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