"They were still so close to Jupiter it was impossible to believe that that the ship was orbiting the planet; they might have been in a high-flying aircraft that had just emerged from a sea of clouds. There was no sense of scale; it was easy to imagine that they were seeding away from some terrestrial sunset; the reds and pinks and crimsons sliding below were so familiar.
"And that was an illusion; nothing here had any parallels with Earth. Those colors were intrinsic, not borrowed from the setting sun. The very gases were utterly alien - methane and ammonia and a witch's brew of hydrocarbons, stirred in a hydrogen-helium cauldron. Not one trace of free oxygen, the breath of human life.
"The clouds marched from horizon to horizon in parallel rows, distorted by occasional swirls and eddies. Here and there upwellings of brighter gas broke the pattern and Floyd could also see the dark rim of a great whirlpool, a maelstrom of gas leading down into unfathomable Jovian depths."
-from 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke
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