Voyager 1 Jupiter Images – Hi-res Great Red Spot mosaic

Less than 8 hours before closest approach to Jupiter, Voyager 1 obtained a green and violet filter mosaic with its narrow angle camera (NAC) covering most of the Great Red Spot (GRS) - a total of 28 images. Here the effects of the varying illumination across the mosaic have been removed. At ~6 km/pixel this is the highest resolution pre-Juno color data for Jupiter (all of the higher resolution Voyager images are clear filter images). Lower resolution orange, green and violet images from Voyager 1's wide angle camera (WAC) are also used to show the GRS periphery and surrounding areas. The color in this mosaic was rather difficult to process. The WAC filters are significantly different from the corresponding NAC filters and the left/right edges are not covered by all three WAC filters. There are also some areas in the NAC mosaic where only green or violet was available (especially near the corners of the NAC area). The color is somewhat less accurate there. The NAC data has two times higher resolution than the GRS cross mosaic. Interestingly, large parts of this higher resolution mosaic do not show significantly more details than the GRS cross mosaic. It's rather as if that mosaic has simply been enlarged by a factor of two. Many of the cloud features become more fuzzy and the boundaries between dark and bright features do not appear as sharp as they appear at lower resolution. There are some exceptions from this, for example in the GRS's northeast periphery where relatively bright, elongated clouds are visible. These clouds change very rapidly and cast noticeable shadows when the illumination geometry is favorable and the resolution high enough. The images used in the mosaic were obtained by Voyager 1 on March 5, 1979 when Voyager 1 was about 650,000 km from Jupiter's center.