Jupiter reveals its kaleidoscope of seasons

Plenty of heat, lots of water but almost no likelihood of life

It may look like a Turner painting but this is an image of the atmosphere of Jupiter, and it has deserts and tropics like the Earth, scientists say.

However, there is almost no chance life could exist on the gas giant, according to experts at the US space agency Nasa. Although data beamed back by a "suicide probe" in December 1995 showed there is water - essential to life - in the atmosphere, there is no solid surface on the planet where organic compounds could gather.

The pictures were beamed back by a probe which was sent into the huge planet's atmosphere in December 1995 from the Galileo spacecraft. Though the titanic pressures of the planet crushed the probe within minutes, it managed to send back data which has now been analysed by the Nasa team.

Scientists were surprised to find "wet" and "dry" regions in the atmosphere. They had expected lots of water; instead, they found dry, wet, "super- dry" and "super-wet" regions.

"Jupiter is wet," said Andrew Ingersoll, a planetary science professor at the California Institute of Technology. But he added that the lack of a solid surface made it "highly unlikely" life could exist there.

One planetary scientist said the mixture of elements found in Jupiter's atmosphere suggests it was seeded by comets: "We think the same bombardment ... also brought the same important elements to Earth."

The probe entered a clearing in the clouds of the planet. Through that dry spot, deeper and warmer layers are visible. The picture shows a "false colour" image of those clouds, using infrared wavelengths to indicate variations in cloud height and thickness. The dark blue spot in the middle is a hole in the deep cloud, while the light blue region to the left is covered by a very high haze. The multicoloured region on the right consists of overlapping cloud layers of different heights.

In all, the area of the picture covers about 143 million square miles, the merest speck on a planet whose volume is 1,300 times greater than the Earth's.

The Galileo spacecraft is now more than half-way through a two-year orbital tour of Jupiter and its major moons: Io, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. There are high hopes that life could exist below the icy surface of Europa.