Observational History
Early astronomers, using small telescopes, recorded the changing appearance of Jupiter's atmosphere. Their descriptive terms—belts and zones, brown spots and red spots, plumes, barges, festoons, and streamers—are still used. Other terms such as vorticity, vertical motion, cloud heights have entered in use later, in the 20th century.
The first observations of the Jovian atmosphere at higher resolution than possible with Earth-based telescopes were taken by the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. The first truly detailed images of Jupiter's atmosphere were provided by the Voyagers. The two spacecraft were able to image details at a resolution as low as 5 km in size in various spectra, and also able to create "approach movies" of the atmosphere in motion. The Galileo probe saw less of Jupiter's atmosphere, but at a better average resolution and a wider spectral bandwidth.
Today, astronomers have access to a continuous record of Jupiter's atmospheric activity thanks to telescopes such as Hubble. These show that the atmosphere is occasionally wracked by massive disturbances, but that, overall, it is remarkably stable. The vertical motion of Jupiter's atmosphere was largely determined by the identification of trace gases by ground-based telescopes. Spectroscopic studies after the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 gave a glimpse of the Jupiter's composition beneath the cloud tops. The presence of diatomic sulfur (S2) and carbon disulfide (CS2) was recorded—the first detection of either in Jupiter, and only the second detection of S2 in any astronomical object— together with other molecules such as ammonia (NH3) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S), while oxygen-bearing molecules such as sulfur dioxide were not detected, to the surprise of astronomers.
The Galileo atmospheric probe, as it plunged into Jupiter, measured the wind, temperature, composition, clouds, and radiation levels down to 22 bar. However, below 1 bar elsewhere on Jupiter there is uncertainty in the quantities.
Read more about this topic: Atmosphere Of Jupiter
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