| Piú votate - Jupiter: the "King" and His Moons |
Jupiter-021307_JKdk3.jpgJupiter, from New Horizons56 visiteCaption NASA:"This image of Jupiter is produced from a 2x2 mosaic of photos taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), and assembled by the LORRI Team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
The telescopic camera snapped the images during a 3', 35" span on February 10, 2007, when the spacecraft was about 29 MKM (approx. 18 MMs) from Jupiter.
At this distance, Jupiter's diameter was 1015 LORRI pixels - nearly filling the imager's entire (1,024-by-1,024 pixel) field of view.
Features as small as 290 Km (about 180 miles) are visible.
Both the Great Red Spot and Little Red Spot are visible in the image, on the left and lower right, respectively. The apparent "storm" on the Planet's right limb is a section of the South Tropical Zone that has been detached from the Region to its West (or left) by a "disturbance" that scientists and amateur astronomers are watching closely.
At the time LORRI took these images, New Horizons was 820 million kilometers (510 million miles) from home - nearly 5½ times the distance between the Sun and Earth. This is the last full-disk image of Jupiter LORRI will produce, since Jupiter is appearing larger as New Horizons draws closer, and the imager will start to focus on specific areas of the planet for higher-resolution studies".MareKromium
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Jupiter-02.jpgJupiter's Magnetic Fields58 visitenessun commento
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Jupiter~0.jpgThe "true" colors of Jupiter (an interpretation)135 visiteJupiter has several narrow belts of distinct colors as well as reddish oval shaped stable cyclonic weather zones such as the 'Great Red Spot'. The overall albedo of the planet is 0,52. The colors shown in the strips are of the wider alternating belts and zones extending from either side of the often white Equatorial Zone.
This is a Voyager 1 image assembled from raw data and color balanced to approximate the colors and contrast of the Planet.
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Jupiter-PIA02880.jpgThe "Heat" of Jupiter55 visiteOriginal caption:"These images taken through the wide angle camera near closest approach in the deep near-infrared methane band, combined with filters which sense electromagnetic radiation of orthogonal polarization, show that the light from the Poles of Jupiter is "polarized".
That is, the Poles appear bright in one image, and dark in the other. Polarized light is most readily scattered by aerosols. These images indicate that the aerosol particles at Jupiter's Poles are small and likely consist of aggregates of even smaller particles, whereas the particles at the Equator and covering the Great Red Spot are larger.
Images like these will allow scientists to ascertain the distribution, size and shape of aerosols, and consequently, the distribution of heat, in Jupiter's atmosphere".
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Europa-PIA01404.jpgConamara Chaos Region (HR)54 visiteThis HR view of the Conamara Chaos Region on Jupiter's moon Europa, reveals craters which range in size from about 30 to over 450 mt (slightly over 1/4 of a mile) in diameter. The large number of craters seen here is unusual for Europa. This section of Conamara Chaos lies inside a bright ray of material which was ejected by the large impact crater, Pwyll, about 1000 Km (620 miles) to the South. The presence of craters within the bright ray suggests that many are secondaries which formed from chunks of material that were thrown out by the enormous energy of the impact which formed Pwyll. North is to the upper right of the picture and the Sun illuminates the surface from the East. The image, centered at 9° Latitude and 274° Longitude, covers an area of approx. 8 by 4 Km (such as about 5 by 2,5 miles). The finest details that can be discerned in this picture are about 20 mt (66 feet) across. The images were taken on December 16, 1997 from a distance of 960 Km from Europa.
(7 voti)
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Io-PIA00495.jpgAs Time Goes By...On Io!54 visiteVolcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io are compared in these images from Galileo spacecraft (right) taken in early September of 1997 and from the Voyager spacecraft (left) taken in 1979. Prometheus (bright ring in upper right) was first seen as an erupting volcano by the Voyager spacecraft and still features an active plume. A smaller active plume was discovered at the volcano Culann Patera (dark feature at lower left) by the Galileo spacecraft. Prometheus has displayed similar characteristics such as size, shape and brightness to Galileo's cameras as it did to Voyager's. However, several intriguing differences are also apparent. There appears to be a new dark lava flow emanating from the vent of Prometheus, and the plume is now erupting from a position about 75 Km (about 46,5 miles) west from where the hot spot resided in 1979. It is not known if the plume source is the same or if the plume is now emanating from a new source. Overall, scientists studying Galileo images of Io see that a wide variety of surface changes have occurred on Io since 1979. The Galileo image was taken at a range of about 487,000 kilometers (about 302,000 miles) from Io. The Voyager image was taken from about 800,000 kilometers (about 500,000 miles).
(7 voti)
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Ganymede-PIA02582.jpgScarps on Ganymede55 visiteOriginal caption:"NASA's Galileo spacecraft took this image of dark terrain within Nicholson Regio, near the border with Harpagia Sulcus on Jupiter's moon Ganymede. The ancient, heavily cratered dark terrain is faulted by a series of scarps. The faulted blocks form a series of "stair-steps" like a tilted stack of books. On Earth, similar types of features form when tectonic faulting breaks the crust and the intervening blocks are pulled apart and rotate. This image supports the notion that the boundary between bright and dark terrain is created by that type of extensional faulting.
North is to the right of the picture and the Sun illuminates the surface from the west (top). The image is centered at -14° latitude and 320° longitude and covers an area approx. 16 by 15 Km (about 10 by 9 miles). The resolution is 20 mt (66 feet) per picture element. The image was taken on May 20, 2000, at a range of 2.090 Km (about 1.299 miles)".
(7 voti)
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Ganymede and Europa-PIA02574.jpgGanymede and Europa: so different and yet so similar!58 visiteThis frame compares a HR view of Arbela Sulcus on Ganymede (top) with the gray band Thynia Linea on another Jovian moon, Europa (bottom), shown to the same scale. Both images are from NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
Arbela Sulcus is one of the smoothest lanes of bright terrain identified on Ganymede, but subtle striations are apparent here along its length. This section of Arbela contrasts markedly from highly fractured terrain to its west and dark terrain to its east.
On Europa, gray bands such as Thynia Linea have formed by tectonic crustal spreading and renewal. Such bands have sliced through and completely separated pre-existing features in the surrounding bright, ridged plains. The younger prominent double ridge Delphi Flexus cuts across Thynia Linea. The scarcity of craters on Europa attests to the relative youth of its surface compared to Ganymede's.
Unusual for Ganymede, it is possible that Arbela Sulcus has formed by complete separation of Ganymede's icy crust, like bands on Europa. Tests of this idea come from detailed comparisons of their internal shapes and the relationships to the surrounding structures.
In the Ganymede image, north is to the top of the picture and the Sun illuminates the surface from the west. The image, centered at -15degrees latitude and 347 degrees longitude, covers an area approximately 34 by 26 kilometers (21 by 16 miles). The resolution is 34 meters (112 feet) per picture element. The image was taken on May 20, 2000, at a range of 3,370 kilometers (2,094 miles).
In the Europa image, north is to the upper-right of the picture and the Sun illuminates the surface from the northwest. The image, centered at-66 degrees latitude and 161 degrees longitude, covers an area approximately 44 by 46 kilometers (27 by 29 miles). The resolution is 45 meters (147 feet) per picture element. The image was taken on September 26, 1998, at a range of 3,817 kilometers (2,371 miles).
(7 voti)
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Thebe-PIA01075.jpgThebe56 visiteOriginal caption:"These 2 images of the Jovian moon Thebe were taken by Galileo's solid state imaging system in November 1996 and June 1997, respectively. North is approximately up in both cases. Thebe, whose longest dimension is about 116 Km (or 72 miles) across, is tidally locked so that the same side of the satellite always points towards Jupiter, similar to how the nearside of our own Moon always points toward Earth. In such a tidally locked state, one side of Thebe always points in the direction in which Thebe moves as it orbits about Jupiter. This is called the "leading side" of the moon and is shown at the left. The image on the right emphasizes the side of Thebe that faces away from Jupiter (the so-called "anti-Jupiter" side). Note that there appear to be at least three or four very large impact craters on the satellite - very large in the sense that each of these craters is roughly comparable in size to the radius of Thebe".
Nota: crateri troppo grandi per un mondo così piccolo...
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Callisto-Asgard emi.-Gal-PIA00562_modest.jpgThe "Asgard" hemisphere of Callisto (detail mgnf)61 visiteCaption NASA originale:"...Dominating the scene is the impact structure, Asgard, centered on the smooth, bright region near the middle of the picture and surrounded by concentric rings up to 1.700 kilometers in diameter. A second ringed structure with a diameter of about 500 kilometers can be seen to the north of Asgard, partially obscured by the more recent, bright-rayed crater, Burr. The icy materials excavated by the younger craters contrast sharply with the darker and redder coatings on older surfaces of this Moon..."
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Ganymede-PIA00380_modest.jpgGanymede from 250.000 Km56 visiteCaption NASA originale:"This picture of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest satellite, was taken by Voyager 1 on the afternoon of March 5, 1979, from a range of about 250,000 km. The center of the picture is at 60 north latitude and 318 longitude and the distance across the bottom of the photograph is about 1000 km. The smallest features visible in this picture are about 5 km across. This picture shows impact craters many of which display ray systems probably consisting largely of icy material thrown out by the impacts. Peculiar systems of sinuous ridges and grooves traverse the surface and are best seen near the terminator".
(7 voti)
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Europa-Thera and Thrace Macula-PIA00875.jpg"Thera" and "Thrace" Macula on Europa54 visiteThis image of Europa's southern hemisphere was obtained by the solid state imaging (CCD) system on board NASA's Galileo spacecraft during its sixth orbit of Jupiter. The upper left portion of the image shows the southern extent of the "wedges" region, an area that has undergone extensive disruption. South of the wedges, the eastern extent of Agenor Linea (nearly 1000 kilometers in length) is also visible. Thera and Thrace Macula are the dark irregular features southeast of Agenor Linea. This image can be used by scientists to build a global map of Europa by tying such Galileo images together with images from 1979 during NASA's Voyager mission. Such lower resolution images also provide the context needed to interpret the higher resolution images taken by the Galileo during both its nominal mission and the upcoming Europa mission. North is to the top of the picture and the sun illuminates the surface from the right. The image, centered at -40 latitude and 180 longitude, covers an area approximately 675 by 675 kilometers. The finest details that can be discerned in this picture are about 3.3 kilometers across. The images were taken on Feb 20, 1997 at 12 hours, 55 minutes, 34 seconds Universal Time when the spacecraft was at a range of 81,707 kilometers.
(7 voti)
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