This single frame from a color movie of Jupiter from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows what it would look like to unpeel the entire globe of Jupiter, stretch it out on a wall into the form of a rectangular map. Photo: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.  WATCH THE MOVIE (250k, 18sec file)

Imagery from NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been used to generate this first color movie of Jupiter's horizontal bands of clouds from the Saturn-bound probe.

The orange and white bands slide in opposite directions from each other and a swirl of winds gyrate around Jupiter's Great Red Spot.

This movie was produced using images from 24 Jupiter rotations, from October 31 to November 9. The 24-frame clip shows what it would look like to unpeel the entire globe of Jupiter, stretch it out on a wall in the form of a rectangular map, and watch its atmosphere evolve with time.

Cassini will pass Jupiter at a distance of about 9.7 million kilometers (6 million miles) on December 30. The spacecraft will use a boost from Jupiter's gravity to reach its ultimate destination, Saturn, in July 2004.

Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini and Galileo missions for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.