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Images of Jupiter

paul — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:03:44 +0000

Jupiter, the most massive planet in our solar system — with dozens of moons and an enormous magnetic field — forms a kind of miniature solar system. Jupiter does resemble a star in composition, but it did not grow big enough to ignite. The planet’s swirling cloud stripes are punctuated by massive storms such as the Great Red Spot, which has raged for hundreds of years. The following images were taken by the Cassini probe on the way to Saturn.

Jupiter Swirls Date: 5 Mar 1979 This close-up of swirling clouds around Jupiter's Great Red Spot was taken by Voyager 1. It was assembled from three black and white negatives. Credit: NASA/JPL

These color maps of Jupiter were constructed from images taken by the narrow-angle camera onboard NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 11 and 12, 2000, as the spacecraft neared Jupiter during its flyby of the giant planet. Cassini was on its way to Saturn. They are the most detailed global color maps of Jupiter ever produced. The smallest visible features are about 120 kilometers (75 miles) across.

North Polar: Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

South Pole: Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Jupiter Globe: Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

This true-color simulated view of Jupiter is composed of four images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. These images were combined and the cylindrical map projected onto a globe in order to illustrate what Jupiter would look like if the cameras used to image this planet had a field-of-view large enough to capture the entire planet. The resolution is about 144 kilometers (89 miles) per pixel. Jupiter’s moon Europa is casting the shadow on the planet.

Titan, Enceladus, Dione, and Mimas Transit of Saturn

paul — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:23:33 +0000

Taken February, 2009 – Hubble

Credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: M. Wong (STScI/UC Berkeley) and C. Go (Philippines)

“This picture was taken with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on 24 February 2009, when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 1.25 billion kilometres from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 300 kilometres across on Saturn. This close-up view of Saturn’s disc captures the transit of several moons across the face of the gas giant planet. The giant orange moon Titan — larger than the planet Mercury — can be seen at upper right. The white icy moons that are much closer to Saturn, hence much closer to the ring plane in this view, are, from left to right: Enceladus, Dione, and Mimas. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet.”

Jupiter Photo from Dublin Oct 4th 2009

paul — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:50:37 +0000

Once again the sky was not great, but every now and then I could see the Moon and Jupiter quite clearly. So I managed to take a picture (a bit overexposed perhaps) and I caught the 4 Galilean satellites – Io Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. So then I started to wonder, how to tell them apart. Sky and Telescope have a super Java tool called Jupiter’s Moons, which is worth a look.

So here is my first picture of Jupiter, with the moons, as follows
Europa, Jupiter, Io (about to be eclipsed), Ganymeade, and Callisto.

This is a direct view image as I was using a Nikon D50 DSLR Oct 4 2009, 22:25.

F/5.6, Exosure 1/2 second. 300mm Focal Length. ISO 400, Shutter about 2 seconds

As far as I can tell the star to the left of Jupiter is IOT Cap, 32 Cap in the consellation Capricornus.

Juno still on course for 2011 Launch

admin — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:35:42 +0000

Juno is still on schedule for a 2011 Aug launch. This is a solar powered 5 year trip to Jupiter. But the really cool thing about the Juno programme is that it is the first spacecraft to attempt to make it past the Kuiper belt to the outer planets using Solar cell technology. Juno will fly closer to the planet than the Galileo spacecraft giving us our closest look yet… It may be 2 years away, but having passed a recent design review, the $700 Million mission is certainly going to be ground breaking, and worth a watch.. I’ll keep you posted.