NASA Releases New Images Of Jupiter

Ananova ^ | 3-7-2003

[blam]

Nasa releases new images of Jupiter

Images of Jupiter captured by a Nasa craft on its way to Saturn have been made public for the first time.

The pictures, beamed to Earth from the Cassini spacecraft, are being analysed by scientists at the Astronomy Unit at Queen Mary, University of London.

As well as providing new views of Jupiter and its moons, they have turned at least one scientific assumption about the giant planet upside down.

The new evidence, published in the journal Science, revises long held beliefs about Jupiter's dark belts and lighter zones.

It had long been thought that the pale regions were areas of rising atmosphere while air in the dark bands was descending.

But Cassini's images suggest that the opposite is true - air is rising in the belts and sinking in the zones.

Cassini was launched in October 1997 on a mission to Saturn, which it should reach in July next year.

It carries the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which is due to parachute down into the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.

The spacecraft made a fly-by of Jupiter at a distance of six million miles to pick up speed by getting a gravitational kick from the planet. Scientists took the opportunity to obtain thousands of images.

The pictures clearly show Jupiter's swirling cloud bands and the planet's famous Red Spot - thought to be a giant storm system. Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, can also be seen, looking like a tiny pea.

Story filed: 16:08 Friday 7th March 2003

[farmfriend]

ping and bump

[Brett66]

Jupiter doesn't have a surface, but it's atmospheric gasses become compressed the deeper you go into it. It would turn into a liquid with ever increasing density. IIRC at some point it turns into a metallic hydrogen in it's core,according to theories about it's composition.

[FreedomCalls]

I can make out what looks like a black rectangular slab in one of the pictures. I wonder what that is?

[blam]

" I wonder what that is?"

Something wonderful.

[petuniasevan]

Thank you for the PING.

Linked to APOD 3-08-03...

[Theophilus]

...so if you could escape its gravity you could fly right through it?

Goodness No! The Galileo spacecraft (currently on a terminal trajectory with Jupiter plunging Sept 21st) dropped a probe into Jupiter a few years ago and it didn't make it very far (95 miles down and then annihilation). Think a million times more pressure than the bottom of Pacific Ocean. Jupiter is like a dead star - super hot - unbelievably hot and dense compressed gas with a magnetic field so powerful that when particles in the solar wind collide with it, it creates a very thin plasma bow wave that is the hottest place in the solar system, hotter even than the core of the sun. The material state (solid, liquid or gas) of Jupiter is unlike anything we can imagine on Earth. Certainly impenetrable.

[abner]

Astronomy ping!

[PeaceBeWithYou]

"My God....It's full of stars!"

Unfortunately, the idea of Jupiter being a failed star isn't true, and we won't have "all those worlds (except Europa)" to colonize.

[Republic]

Thanks for a really fascinating post! Great pictures.

[strela]

One of Arthur C. Clarke's theories about Jupiter was interesting. He said that all the carbon had been compressed at the center of the planet into essentially a diamond as large as the earth.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

Fly thru the center of Jupiter you say? I think I'll pass. - 30,000ºC, gravity compressed liquid metal hydrogen with a rocky iron molten core at pressures of 100 million Earth atmospheres, with a magnetic and electrical force that extends to the orbit of Saturn. No one, that I know of, has ever calculated what the magnetic and electrical properties would be like the core, but you would not survive it. Hell, sheer absolute hell!

Nope, no place I want to go anywhere near.

[AFPhys]

I have no idea now who wrote it, but i recall a sci-fi book from many years ago describing a construction project on Jupiter... working a crane and scaffold a hundred miles high over the surface... huge winds... gravity... electrical effects, etc.

It is a bit sad sometimes when we find out so much about one of these monsters that we have to discard the romantic stories and possibilities... although... who knows what engineering feats we will be able to accomplish a thousand years hence?

[AFPhys]

One of these years we are going to have to put a size limit on things we decide to call "moons" ... otherwise there will be about a billion ping-pong-ball-sized "moons" orbiting every planet as our observation platforms get increasingly powerful. We're going to run out of names - and I certainly won't be able to remember them.

[PeaceBeWithYou]

I think that red spot is spitting "moons" out when no one is looking.;-)

I agree there should be a size limitation for named moons. Below that limit we could just give them numbers.

[AFPhys]

I don't think they should be designated "moons" at all... simply orbiting rocks with numbers.

[Physicist]

Is this the one that has plutonium on it?

Just so. The luddite opponents pretended to panic about scenarios so preposterous they would make Ed Wood, Jr. blush. The hysteria about it compared only to anti-biotechnology superstitions.

[SunkenCiv]

---

· Catastrophism ping list · join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark ·

---