Giant picture of a giant planet

Saturn-bound Cassini captured this arresting view, the sharpest global portrait of Jupiter ever produced, as the spacecraft passed within 10 million kilometers of the planet on Dec. 29, 2000. Released by NASA last week, this true-color composite shows cloud features as small as 60 km across. White thunderstorms punctuate several of Jupiter’s cloud bands, while the Great Red Spot, a vortex bigger than Earth, sheds a wake.