what would it be like to travel to Jupiter?

Question

And what would you observe as you descended into Jupiter's atmosphere? Additional website references would be helpful ;)

Answer 1

Upon nearing Jupiter the first obvious thing that you would see is the magnifiscent colored bands encirceling this grand planet. As you enter orbit and look around you the next thing you will notice is the 60 some odd moons that reside in orbit around Jupiter.With the largest being Titan, followed by Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and the beautiful Europa. as your gaze turns towards the surface of this great gas giant, you will resolve the fantastic surface anomalies which are split into two categories, the first being the dark belts or bands that start at the north polar region and work their way south beginning with the North polar region, the North north temperate belt, the Equatorial band ,which runs dead center of the planets equater, then you see the South equatorial belt, then the South temperate belt, then the South south temperate belt, and lastly the South polar region.
As you get closer to the surface you will notice the second catagory of surface features known as the Bright Zones, which lie between the darker belts which we described earlier. these zones consist of the North north temperate zone , the North temperate zone, the North tropical zone, The equatorial zone, and the South south temperate zone. As you move ever closer you will see the atmospheric oddities known as Ovals which look like small versions of the great Red Spot (and junior of course), along with White spots which are smaller and more spherical in nature than Ovals, then there are Festoons which are dark streaks that often appear as bluish in color, Rifts which are bright lines that appear inside of belts or zones, then we have Bars-Rods- Barges, which are strange dark mishapen lines of varying sizes, then finally you have Knots, which are large clumpy thickenings found in any of the belts, but most common in the equatorial bands.
Some people believe that Jupiter is simply a gas giant, but if this were true then would not the collision of the comet fragments from Shoemaker/levy have merely been absorbed rather than putting on the grand disply of enormous plumes of debris that lasted for months? As you descend into the cloud layers we are able to confirm that Jupiter gives off more heat than it absorbs.
Upon entering the atmosphere of Jupiter we find that the bright zones that we mentioned earlier are composed of Ammonia crystals which appear white, and the orange and brown shades are caused by contaminates which are probably ammonium hydrosulfide, which is welling up from the lower cloud layers, where you can see deeper into the clear hydrogen/helium atmosphere. the blue appearence as you descend further comes from incoming light being diffused through the upper gas mix., now apply the braking rockets, because I believe that you are fixing to land on a hard surface.

Answer 2

Painful. You'd be crushed by the gravity before you even reached the surface. Of course, there isn't a literal surface per se, it's more of a mass of thick clouds.

If you descended deep enough you'd eventually find a great ocean of liquid Hydrogen, and going further still you'd eventually hit a solid hydrogen core.

Answer 3

It would be a long long journey and the radiation would kill you before you got to the atmosphere.