Jupiter: the "King" and His Moons
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Jupiter-HR.jpgJupiter's North Pole (HR)53 visiteDa "NASA - Picture of the Day" dell'11-09-2005:"Gas giant Jupiter is the Solar System's largest world with about 320 times the mass of Earth. Famous for its Great Red Spot, Jupiter is also known for its regular, equatorial cloud bands, also visible in very modest sized telescopes.
The dark belts and light-colored zones of Jupiter's cloud bands are organized by the Planet's girdling winds which reach speeds of up to 500 Km/hour. On toward the Jovian poles though, the cloud structures become more mottled and convoluted until, as in this Cassini spacecraft mosaic of Jupiter, the Planet's Polar Region begins to look something like a brain. This striking equator-to-pole change in cloud patterns is not presently understood, but may be due in part to the effect of Jupiter's rapid rotation or to convection vortices generated at high latitudes by the massive Planet's internal heat loss.
Cassini took this dramatically detailed view of Jupiter in December 2000, during its flyby enroute to Saturn".
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Jupiter-HST-2008-42-a-ful-001_jpg.jpgHiding... (natural colors; credits: NASA)54 visiteNASA's Hubble Space Telescope has caught Jupiter's moon Ganymede playing a game of "peek-a-boo", In this crisp Hubble image, Ganymede is shown just before it ducks behind the giant planet.
Ganymede completes an orbit around Jupiter every 7 days. Because Ganymede's orbit is tilted nearly edge-on to Earth, it routinely can be seen passing in front of and disappearing behind its giant host, only to reemerge later.
Composed of rock and ice, Ganymede is the largest moon in our Solar System. It is even larger than the planet Mercury.
But Ganymede looks like a dirty snowball next to Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Jupiter is so big that only part of its Southern Hemisphere can be seen in this image.
Hubble's view is so sharp that astronomers can see features on Ganymede's surface, most notably the white impact crater, Tros, and its system of rays, bright streaks of material blasted from the crater. Tros and its ray system are roughly the width of Arizona.
The image also shows Jupiter's Great Red Spot, the large eye-shaped feature at upper left. A storm the size of two Earths, the Great Red Spot has been raging for more than 300 years. Hubble's sharp view of the gas giant planet also reveals the texture of the clouds in the Jovian Atmosphere as well as various other storms and vortices.
Astronomers use these images to study Jupiter's Upper Atmosphere. As Ganymede passes behind the giant planet, it reflects sunlight, which then passes through Jupiter's Atmosphere. Imprinted on that light is information about the gas giant's atmosphere, which yields clues about the properties of Jupiter's high-altitude haze above the cloud tops.
This color image was made from three images taken on April 9, 2007, with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in red, green, and blue filters. The image shows Jupiter and Ganymede in close to natural colors.MareKromium
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Jupiter-HST-2008-42-a-ful-002_jpg.jpgHiding... (natural colors; credits: NASA)54 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
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Jupiter-HST-2008-42-a-ful-003_jpg.jpgHiding... (natural colors; credits: NASA)54 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
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Jupiter-HST-2008-42-a-ful-004_jpg.jpgHiding: the whole sequence54 visiteThis series of images taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, disappearing behind the Planet.
The top images show Ganymede next to Jupiter. The images were taken in blue and red light on Jan. 19, 2005 with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The close-up images at bottom follow Ganymede as it ducks behind Jupiter a few minutes later.MareKromium
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Jupiter-HST.jpgSomething's happening inside Jupiter...53 visiteMassive Jupiter is undergoing dramatic atmospheric changes that have never been seen before with the keen "eye" of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
Jupiter's turbulent clouds are always changing as they encounter atmospheric disturbances while sweeping around the planet at hundreds of miles per hour. But these Hubble images reveal a rapid transformation in the shape and color of Jupiter's clouds near the equator, marking an entire face of the globe.
The planet is wrapped in bands of yellows, browns, and whites. These bands are produced by the atmosphere flowing in different directions at various latitudes. Lighter-hued areas where the atmosphere rises are called zones. Darker regions where the atmosphere falls are called belts. When these opposing flows interact, storms and turbulence appear.
Between March 25 and June 5, Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 captured entire bands of clouds changing color. Zones have darkened into belts and belts have lightened and transformed into zones. Cloud features have rapidly altered in shape and size.
The image at left shows a thin band of white clouds above Jupiter's equator. The white color indicates clouds at higher altitudes in Jupiter's atmosphere. In the image at right, the band's white hue has turned brown, showing clouds deep within the planet's atmosphere. The whole band appears to have merged with the one below it.
In the same cloud band above the equator, the small swirls in the left-hand image have morphed into larger wave-like features in the right-hand photo. Dominating the band is a dark streak that resembles a snake. This serpent-shaped structure is actually a small tear in the cloud deck, which gives astronomers a view deep within the atmosphere.
Below the equatorial region, the brownish upside-down shark fin in the left-hand image disappears in the photo at right. Appearing instead are brownish tongue-shaped clouds with a stream of white swirls below them.
These global upheavals have been seen before, but not with Hubble's sharp resolution. Astronomers using ground-based telescopes first spied drastic atmospheric transformation in the 1980s. Another major disturbance was seen in the early 1990s, after Hubble was launched into space. The telescope, however, did not have the resolution to view the upheaval in fine detail. These higher-quality Hubble images may help astronomers understand how such global upheavals develop on Jupiter.
MareKromium
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Jupiter-HST~0.jpgThree "Red Spots" Mix it Up on Jupiter53 visiteThis sequence of Hubble Space Telescope images offers an unprecedented view of a planetary game of Pac-Man among 3 "Red Spots" clustered together in Jupiter's Atmosphere. The time series shows the passage of the "Red Spot Jr." in a band of clouds below (South) of the Great Red Spot (GRS). "Red Spot Jr." first appeared on Jupiter in early 2006 when a previously white storm turned red. This is the second time, since turning red, it has skirted past its big brother apparently unscathed. But this is not the fate of "Baby Red Spot", which is in the same latitudinal band as the GRS. This new red spot first appeared earlier this year. The Baby Red Spot gets ever closer to the GRS in this picture sequence until it is caught up in the anticyclonic spin of the GRS. In the final image the Baby Spot is deformed and pale in color and has been spun to the right (East) of the GRS.
These three natural-color Jupiter images were made from data acquired on May 15, June 28, and July 8, 2008, by the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).MareKromium
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Jupiter-HW-PIA00360_modest.jpgHigh Winds on Jupiter (from appx. 4.000.000 Km)53 visiteCaption NASA originale:"A high resolution image of the Jovian mid-latitudes taken by Voyager 1 on March 2, 1979, shows distinctly differing characteristics of the planet's meteorology. The well defined pale orange line running from southwest to northeast (North is at the top) marks the high speed north temperate current with wind speeds of about 120 meters p/s. These high winds produce a cleaner flow pattern in the surrounding clouds whose average lifetime is of about 2 years".
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Jupiter-Impact-2010-000.jpgImpact on Jupiter!66 visiteUn "Grazie di Cuore" a Lorenzo Leone ("Anakin") per aver citato l'informazione - preziosa e straordinaria, da innumerevoli punti di vista - che ora possiamo illustrare con immagini adeguate.
Un asteroide "grande quanto la Terra" o quasi, impatta Giove. "Grande quanto la Terra"? Onestamente ne dubitiamo (rectius: VOGLIAMO DUBITARNE!), per tantissimi motivi (sicurezza della Terra in primis ed efficienza del Sistema di Monitoraggio dei cosiddetti "Asteroidi Vicini" in secundis).
Ma una cosa รจ certa. O meglio, "sembra" certa: il Cielo sta cambiando.
Osserviamolo meglio! Osserviamolo TUTTI!MareKromium
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Jupiter-Impact-2010-001.jpgImpact on Jupiter! (ctx frame)54 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
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Jupiter-Impact-2010-002.jpgImpact on Jupiter! (edm)54 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
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Jupiter-Impact-2010-003.jpgImpact on Jupiter! (from Hubble Space Telescope - ctx frame)53 visiteNASA scientists have interrupted the checkout and calibration of the Hubble Space Telescope to aim the recently refurbished observatory at a new expanding spot on the giant planet Jupiter. The spot, caused by the impact of a comet or an asteroid, is changing day to day in the Planet's cloud tops.
For the past several days the world's largest telescopes have been trained on Jupiter. Not to miss the potentially new science in the unfolding drama 360 MMs away, Space Telescope Science Institute director Matt Mountain allocated discretionary time to a team of astronomers led by Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
The Hubble picture, taken on July 23, 2009, is the sharpest visible-light picture taken of the impact feature. The observations were made with Hubble's new camera, the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
"This image of the impact on Jupiter is fantastic" said U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee. "It tells us that our astronauts and ground crew at the Goddard Space Flight Center successfully repaired the Hubble telescope".
"This is just one example of what Hubble's new, state-of-the-art camera can do, thanks to the STS-125 astronauts and the entire Hubble team," said Ed Weiler, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate. "However, the best is yet to come!".
"Hubble's truly exquisite imaging capability has revealed an astonishing wealth of detail in the 2009 impact site" said Hammel. "By combining these images with our ground-based data at other wavelengths, our Hubble data will allow a comprehensive understanding of exactly what is happening to the impact debris. My sincerest congratulations and thanks to the team who created Wide Field Camera 3 and to the astronauts who installed it!".
Co-investigator Imke de Pater of the University of California at Berkeley said: "The combination of the Hubble data with mid-infrared images from the Gemini telescope will give us an insight into changes of the vertical structure of the atmosphere due to the impact".MareKromium
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