galacticnucleus:

A ‘Moving’ Jupiter Global Map

The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons has acquired six global maps of Jupiter as the spacecraft approaches the giant planet for a close encounter at the end of February. The high-resolution camera acquired each of six observation “sets” as a series of individual pictures taken one hour apart, covering a full 10-hour rotation of Jupiter. The LORRI team at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) reduced the sets to form six individual maps in a simple rectangular projection. These six maps were then combined to make the movie.

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Many features seen in Jupiter’s atmosphere are giant storm clouds. The Little Red Spot, which LORRI will image close-up on February 27, is the target-like feature located near 30 degrees South and 230 degrees West; this storm is larger than the Earth. The even larger Great Red Spot is seen near 20 degrees South and 320 degrees West. The counterclockwise rotation of the clouds within the Great Red Spot can be seen. The westward drift of the Great Red Spot is easily seen in the movie, as is the slower drift, in the opposite direction, of the Little Red Spot. The storms of Jupiter are not fixed in location relative to each other or relative to any solid surface below, because Jupiter is a fluid planet without a solid surface.

Also, dramatic changes are seen in the series of bright plume-like clouds encircling the planet between 0 and 10 degrees North. Scientists believe these result from an enormous atmospheric wave with rising air, rich in ammonia that condenses to form the plume tails, and with falling air in the dark areas just to the east of each plume.

The maps of Jupiter shown here do not include the polar regions, because those regions are not well seen by LORRI from its vantage point high above Jupiter’s equatorial region. Shadows of Jupiter’s moons (first of Io, then of Ganymede) appear in two of the maps.

Image Credit:NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

scinerds:

Sharpening up Jupiter

Amazing image of Jupiter taken in infrared light on the night of Aug. 17, 2008 with the Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics Demonstrator (MAD) prototype instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The great red spot is not visible in this image as it was on the other side of the planet during the observations. The observations were done at infrared wavelengths where absorption due to hydrogen and methane is strong. This explains why the colours are different from how we usually see Jupiter in visible-light.

Credit: ESO/F. Marchis, M. Wong, E. Marchetti, P. Amico, S. Tordo

(via strahlungen)

sklogw:

Jupiter

(via spaceplasma)

leviathan8:

Hubble’s view of an ancient raging storm on Jupiter

This mosaic presents a series of pictures of the Red Spot obtained by Hubble between 1992 and 1999. This Great Red Spot is present in Jupiter’s atmosphere for more than 300 years. It is now known that it is a vast storm, spinning like a cyclone. The Red Spot rotates in a counterclockwise direction in the southern hemisphere, showing that it is a high-pressure system. Winds inside this Jovian storm reach speeds of about 270 mph.

The Red Spot is the largest known storm in the Solar System. With a diameter of 15,400 miles, it is almost twice the size of the entire Earth and one-sixth the diameter of Jupiter itself.

The long lifetime of the Red Spot may be due to the fact that Jupiter is mainly a gaseous planet. It possibly has liquid layers but lacks a solid surface, which would dissipate the storm’s energy, much as happens when a hurricane makes landfall on the Earth. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically.

Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

(via distant-traveller)

spacettf:

Luna Jupiter 3 by danicaxete on Flickr.