Portal:Jupiter/Meteor
Lightnings
"These two images, taken 75 minutes apart, show lightning storms on the night side of Jupiter along with clouds dimly lit by moonlight from Io, Jupiter's closest moon. The images were taken in visible light and are displayed in shades of red. The images used an exposure time of about one minute, and were taken when the spacecraft was on the opposite side of Jupiter from the Earth and Sun. Bright storms are present at two latitudes in the left image, and at three latitudes in the right image. Each storm was made visible by multiple lightning strikes during the exposure. Other Galileo images were deliberately scanned from east to west in order to separate individual flashes. The images show that Jovian and terrestrial lightning storms have similar flash rates, but that Jovian lightning strikes are a few orders of magnitude brighter in visible light."[1]
"The moonlight from Io allows the lightning storms to be correlated with visible cloud features. The latitude bands where the storms are seen seem to coincide with the "disturbed regions" in daylight images, where short-lived chaotic motions push clouds to high altitudes, much like thunderstorms on Earth. The storms in these images are roughly one to two thousand kilometers across, while individual flashes appear hundreds of kilometer across. The lightning probably originates from the deep water cloud layer and illuminates a large region of the visible ammonia cloud layer from 100 kilometers below it."[1]
"There are several small light and dark patches that are artifacts of data compression. North is at the top of the picture. The images span approximately 50 degrees in latitude and longitude. The lower edges of the images are aligned with the equator. The images were taken on October 5th and 6th, 1997 at a range of 6.6 million kilometers by the Solid State Imaging (SSI) system on NASA's Galileo spacecraft."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Sue Lavoie (10 December 1997). PIA01096: Jovian Lightning and Moonlit Clouds. Palo Alto, California USA: NASA/JPL. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01096. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
Cyclones
"This third red spot, which is a fraction of the size of the two other features, lies to the west of the Great Red Spot in the same latitude band of clouds."[1]
"The new red spot was previously a white oval-shaped storm. The change to a red color indicates its swirling storm clouds are rising to heights like the clouds of the Great Red Spot. One possible explanation is that the red storm is so powerful it dredges material from deep beneath Jupiter's cloud tops and lifts it to higher altitudes where solar ultraviolet radiation – via some unknown chemical reaction – produces the familiar brick color."[1]
"Detailed analysis of the visible-light images taken by Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on May 9 and 10, and near-infrared adaptive optics images taken by the W.M. Keck telescope on May 11, is revealing the relative altitudes of the cloud tops of the three red ovals. Because all three oval storms are bright in near-infrared light, they must be towering above the methane in Jupiter's atmosphere, which absorbs the Sun's infrared light and so looks dark in infrared images."[1]
"Turbulence and storms first observed on Jupiter more than two years ago are still raging, as revealed in the latest pictures. The Hubble and Keck images also reveal the change from a rather bland, quiescent band surrounding the Great Red Spot just over a year ago to one of incredible turbulence on both sides of the spot."[1]
"Red Spot Jr. appeared in spring of 2006. The Great Red Spot has persisted for as long as 200 to 350 years, based on early telescopic observations. If the new red spot and the Great Red Spot continue on their courses, they will encounter each other in August, and the small oval will either be absorbed or repelled from the Great Red Spot. Red Spot Jr. which lies between the two other spots, and is at a lower latitude, will pass the Great Red Spot in June."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Imke de Pater; Phil Marcus; Mike Wong; Xylar Asay-Davis; Christopher Go; Conor Laver; Al Conrad (9 May 2006). New Red Spot Appears on Jupiter. Baltimore, Maryland USA: Hubblesite. http://hubblesite.org/image/2354/news_release/2008-23. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
Meteors
"EVERYBODY who watched the sun with a telescope last summer must have wondered at the great belt of spots lying across the southern part of the disk during the last half of July. Several of the spots and groups were of extraordinary size, and their arrangement was very singular. When the belt extended completely across the sun, there was visible at one time almost every characteristic form that sun-spots present. There was the yawning black chasm with sharply defined yet ragged edges, vast enough to swallow up the whole earth, with room to spare, and surrounded by a regular penumbral border as evenly shaded as an artist could have made it; there was the double or triple spot whose black centers, though widely separated from one another, were tangled, as it were, in one twisted and torn veil of penumbra, or connected by long, shadowy bands; there was the monstrous spot of grotesque form surrounded by a crowd of smaller spots of even more fantastic shape, and enveloped in a broad, irregular penumbra as bizarre and wonderful as the mighty sun-chasms inclosed in it; there was the great spot, often of singular outline, accompanied outside its shadowy borders by one or more swarms of minute black specks pitting the white photosphere in the most extraordinary fashion; there was the huge group, visible even to the unassisted eye, and consisting of half a dozen or more large spots intermingled with smaller ones whose number seemed to defy counting, and enveloped in a penumbral cloak of becoming amplitude; there, near the edges of the disk, were the crinkling lines and heaped-up masses of faculæ, the mountainous hydrogen-flames which marked the places where the intensest solar action was going on—in short, there was a panorama in which every variety of sun-spot seemed to be passing in a gigantic procession across the disk. And what a procession it was!—long enough, nearly, to reach from the earth to the moon and back again three times!"[1]
The appearance of Jupiter during sun flare activity is shown.
References
- ↑ GARRETT P. SERVISS (December 1883). "A BELT OF SUN-SPOTS". Popular Science Monthly 24 (12): 180-6. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Popular_Science_Monthly/Volume_24/December_1883/A_Belt_of_Sun-Spots. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
Vortices
"The familiar banded appearance of Jupiter at low and middle latitudes gradually gives way to a more mottled appearance at high latitudes in this striking true color image taken Dec. 13, 2000, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft."[1]
"The intricate structures seen in the polar region are clouds of different chemical composition, height and thickness. Clouds are organized by winds, and the mottled appearance in the polar regions suggests more vortex-type motion and winds of less vigor at higher latitudes."[1]
"One possible contributor is that the horizontal component of the Coriolis force, which arises from the planet's rotation and is responsible for curving the trajectories of ocean currents and winds on Earth, has its greatest effect at high latitudes and vanishes at the equator. This tends to create small, intense vortices at high latitudes on Jupiter. Another possibility may lie in that fact that Jupiter overall emits nearly as much of its own heat as it absorbs from the Sun, and this internal heat flux is very likely greater at the poles. This condition could lead to enhanced convection at the poles and more vortex-type structures. Further analysis of Cassini images, including analysis of sequences taken over a span of time, should help us understand the cause of equator-to-pole differences in cloud organization and evolution."[1]
"By the time this picture was taken, Cassini had reached close enough to Jupiter to allow the spacecraft to return images with more detail than what's possible with the planetary camera on NASA's Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The resolution here is 114 kilometers (71 miles) per pixel. This contrast-enhanced, edge-sharpened frame was composited from images take at different wavelengths with Cassini's narrow-angle camera, from a distance of 19 million kilometers (11.8 million miles). The spacecraft was in almost a direct line between the Sun and Jupiter, so the solar illumination on Jupiter is almost full phase."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Sue Lavoie (19 December 2000). PIA02856: High Latitude Mottling on Jupiter. Washington DC USA: NASA/JPL. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02856. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
Blue astronomy
"The Juno spacecraft captured this image when the spacecraft was only 11,747 miles (18,906 kilometers) from the tops of Jupiter’s clouds — that’s roughly as far as the distance between New York City and Perth, Australia. The color-enhanced image, which captures a cloud system in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere, was taken on Oct. 24, 2017 at 10:24 a.m. PDT (1:24 p.m. EDT) when Juno was at a latitude of 57.57 degrees (nearly three-fifths of the way from Jupiter’s equator to its north pole) and performing its ninth close flyby of the gas giant planet."[1]
"The spatial scale in this image is 7.75 miles/pixel (12.5 kilometers/pixel)."[1]
"Because of the Juno-Jupiter-Sun angle when the spacecraft captured this image, the higher-altitude clouds can be seen casting shadows on their surroundings. The behavior is most easily observable in the whitest regions in the image, but also in a few isolated spots in both the bottom and right areas of the image."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran (30 November 2017). Jupiter Blues. Washington, DC USA: NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21972/jupiter-blues. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
Rings
"This mosaic of Jupiter's ring system was acquired by NASA's Galileo spacecraft when the Sun was behind the planet, and the spacecraft was in Jupiter's shadow peering back toward the Sun."[1]
"In such a configuration, very small dust-sized particles are accentuated so both the ring particles and the smallest particles in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter are highlighted. Such small particles are believed to have human-scale lifetimes, i.e., very brief compared to the solar system's age."[1]
"Jupiter's ring system is composed of three parts: a flat main ring, a toroidal halo interior to the main ring, and the gossamer ring, which lies exterior to the main ring. Only the main ring and a hint of the surrounding halo can be seen in this mosaic. In order to see the less dense components (the outer halo and gossamer ring) the images must be overexposed with respect to the main ring."[1]
"This composite of two mosaics was taken through the clear filter (610 nanometers) of the solid state imaging (CCD) system on November 9, 1996, during Galileo's third orbit of Jupiter. The ring was approximately 2,300,000 kilometers away. The resolution is approximately 46 kilometers per picture element from right to left; however, because the spacecraft was only about 0.5 degrees above the ring plane, the image is highly foreshortened in the vertical direction. The vertical bright arcs in the middle of the ring mosaics show the edges of Jupiter and are composed of images obtained by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in 1979."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Sue Lavoie (15 September 1998). PIA01621: Jupiter's Ring System. Pasadena, California USA: NASA/JPL. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01621. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
Storms
"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-minute, 35-second span on February 10, when the spacecraft was 29 million kilometers (18 million miles) from Jupiter. At this distance, Jupiter's diameter was 1,015 LORRI pixels -- nearly filling the imager's entire (1,024-by-1,024 pixel) field of view. Features as small as 290 kilometers (180 miles) are visible."[1]
"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"".[1]
"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."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Sue Lavoie (2 April 2007). PIA09243: Full Jupiter Mosaic. Pasadena, California USA: NASA/JPL. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09243. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
Orbital poles
Clouds
"NASA's Juno spacecraft was a little more than one Earth diameter from Jupiter when it captured this mind-bending, color-enhanced view of the planet's tumultuous atmosphere."[1]
"Jupiter completely fills the image, with only a hint of the terminator (where daylight fades to night) in the upper right corner, and no visible limb (the curved edge of the planet)."[1]
"Juno took this image of colorful, turbulent clouds in Jupiter's northern hemisphere on Dec. 16, 2017 at 9:43 a.m. PST (12:43 p.m. EST) from 8,292 miles (13,345 kilometers) above the tops of Jupiter's clouds, at a latitude of 48.9 degrees."[1]
"The spatial scale in this image is 5.8 miles/pixel (9.3 kilometers/pixel)."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Scott Bolton (16 December 2017). PIA21973: High Above Jupiter's Clouds. Pasadena, California USA: NASA/JPL. https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA21973. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
Jet streams
"See a jet stream speeding through Jupiter’s atmosphere in this new view taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft. The jet stream, called Jet N2, was captured along the dynamic northern temperate belts of the gas giant planet. It is the white stream visible from top left to bottom right in the image."[1]
"The color-enhanced image was taken at 10:34 p.m. PST on May 23 (1:34 a.m. EST on May 24), as Juno performed its 13th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time the image was taken, the spacecraft was about 3,516 miles (5,659 kilometers) from the tops of the clouds of the planet at a northern latitude of 32.9 degrees."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran (1 June 2018). Jovian Jet Stream. Washington, DC USA: NASA. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/894/jovian-jet-stream/?category=planets_jupiter. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
Clouds
"NASA’s Juno spacecraft took this color-enhanced image at 10:23 p.m. PDT on May 23, 2018 (1:23 a.m. EDT on May 24), as the spacecraft performed its 13th close flyby of Jupiter. At the time, Juno was about 9,600 miles (15,500 kilometers) from the planet's cloud tops, above a northern latitude of 56 degrees."[1]
"The region seen here is somewhat chaotic and turbulent, given the various swirling cloud formations. In general, the darker cloud material is deeper in Jupiter’s atmosphere, while bright cloud material is high. The bright clouds are most likely ammonia or ammonia and water, mixed with a sprinkling of unknown chemical ingredients."[1]
"A bright oval at bottom center stands out in the scene. This feature appears uniformly white in ground-based telescope observations. However, with JunoCam we can observe the fine-scale structure within this weather system, including additional structures within it. There is not significant motion apparent in the interior of this feature; like the Great Red Spot, its winds probably slows down greatly toward the center."[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Gerald Eichstädt Seán Doran (22 June 2018). Chaotic Clouds of Jupiter. Washington, DC USA: NASA. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/902/chaotic-clouds-of-jupiter/?category=planets_jupiter. Retrieved 29 June 2018.
Complex turbulence
Blue vortex
This image shows distorted bands of clouds near the blue vortex on Jupiter captured by the Juno spacecraft.