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2009 FIRST Robotics Competit
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Rick Mangum and Julia Thomps
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3/21/09
| Description |
Rick Mangum and Julia Thompson are part of the NASA Langley-sponsored FIRST Robotics team, the NASA Knights, that's based at the New Horizons Regional Educational Center that serves six localities near Hampton. The two participated in the Virginia FIRST Robotics regional competition March 19-21 in Richmond. Mangum is one of the team's fabrication mentors and Thompson, a home-schooled student from Gloucester County, is the team captain. FIRST Robotics was founded by inventor Dean Kamen in 1989. He wanted to create a "world where science and technology are celebrated and where young people dream of becoming science and technology heroes." Credit: NASA/Sean Smith |
| Date |
3/21/09 |
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Jupiter's Moons
On Jan. 7, 1610, Galileo Gal
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01/08/10
| Description |
On Jan. 7, 1610, Galileo Galilei's improvements to the telescope enabled humanity to see Jupiter's four largest moons for the first time. Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto--the so-called Galilean satellites--were seen by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on the New Horizons spacecraft during its flyby of Jupiter in late February 2007. The images have been scaled to represent the true relative sizes of the four moons and are arranged in their order from Jupiter. Io is notable for its active volcanism, which New Horizons studied extensively. On the other hand, Europa's smooth, icy surface likely conceals an ocean of liquid water. New Horizons obtained data on Europa's surface composition and imaged subtle surface features, and analysis of these data may provide new information about the ocean and the icy shell that covers it. New Horizons spied Ganymede from 2.2 million miles away. Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, has a dirty ice surface cut by fractures and peppered by impact craters. New Horizons' infrared observations may provide insight into the composition of the moon's surface and interior. Scientists are using the infrared spectra New Horizons gathered of Callisto's ancient, cratered surface to calibrate spectral analysis techniques that will help them to understand the surfaces of Pluto and its moon Charon when New Horizons passes them in 2015. Image Credit: NASA/JHU-APL/Southwest Research Institute |
| Date |
01/08/10 |
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Alice Views Jupiter and Io
| title |
Alice Views Jupiter and Io |
| date |
04.04.2007 |
| description |
This graphic illustrates the pointing and shows the data from one of many observations made by the New Horizons Alice ultraviolet spectrometer (UVS) instrument during the Pluto-bound spacecraft's recent encounter with Jupiter. The red lines in the graphic show the scale, orientation, and position of the combined "box and slot" field of view of the Alice UVS during this observation. The positions of Jupiter's volcanic moon, Io, the torus of ionized gas from Io, and Jupiter are shown relative to the Alice field of view. Like a prism, the spectrometer separates light from these targets into its constituent wavelengths. Io's volcanoes produce an extremely tenuous atmosphere made up primarily of sulfur dioxide gas, which, in the harsh plasma environment at Io, breaks down into its component sulfur and oxygen atoms. Alice observed the auroral glow from these atoms in Io's atmosphere and their ionized counterparts in the Io torus. Io's dayside is deliberately overexposed to bring out faint details in the plumes and on the moon's night side. The continuing eruption of the volcano Tvashtar, at the 1 o'clock position, produces an enormous plume roughly 330 kilometers (200 miles) high, which is illuminated both by sunlight and "Jupiter light." Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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A Burst of Color
| title |
A Burst of Color |
| description |
New Horizons captured this unique view of Jupiter's moon Io with its color camera -- the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) -- at 00:25 UT on March 1, 2007, from a range of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles). The image is centered at Io coordinates 4 degrees south, 162 degrees west, and was taken shortly before the complementary Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) photo of Io released on March 13, which had higher resolution but was not in color. As in the LORRI picture, this processed image shows the nighttime glow of the Tvashtar volcano and its plume rising 330 kilometers (200 miles) into sunlight above Io's north pole. However, the MVIC picture reveals the intense red of the glowing lava at the plume source and the contrasting blue of the fine dust particles in the plume (similar to the bluish color of smoke), as well as more subtle colors on Io's sunlit crescent. The lower parts of the plume in Io's shadow, lit only by the much fainter light from Jupiter, are almost invisible in this rendition. Contrast has been reduced to show the large range of brightness between the plume and Io's disk. A component of the Ralph imaging instrument, MVIC has three broadband color filters: blue (480 nanometers), red (620 nm) and infrared (850 nm), as well as a narrow methane filter (890 nm). Because the camera was designed for the dim illumination at Pluto, not the much brighter sunlight at Jupiter, the red and infrared filters are overexposed on Io's dayside. This image is therefore composed from the blue and methane filters only, and the colors shown are only approximations to those that the eye would see. Nevertheless, the human eye would easily see the red color of the volcano and the blue color of the plume. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Two Moons Meet over Jupiter
| title |
Two Moons Meet over Jupiter |
| date |
03.02.2007 |
| description |
This beautiful image of the crescents of volcanic Io and more sedate Europa was snapped by New Horizons' color Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) at 10:34 UT on March 2, 2007, about two days after New Horizons made its closest approach to Jupiter. The picture was one of a handful of the Jupiter system that New Horizons took primarily for their artistic, rather than scientific value. This particular scene was suggested by space enthusiast Richard Hendricks of Austin, Texas, in response to an Internet request by New Horizons scientists for evocative, artistic imaging opportunities at Jupiter. This image was taken from a range of 4.6 million kilometers (2.8 million miles) from Io and 3.8 million kilometers (2.4 million miles) from Europa. Although the moons appear close in this view, a gulf of 790,000 kilometers (490,000 miles) separates them. The night side of Io is illuminated here by light reflected from Jupiter, which is out of the frame to the right. Europa's night side is completely dark, in contrast to Io, because that side of Europa faces away from Jupiter. Here, Io steals the show with its beautiful display of volcanic activity. Three volcanic plumes are visible. Most conspicuous is the enormous 300-kilometer (190-mile) -high plume from the Tvashtar volcano at the 11 o'clock position on Io's disk. Two much smaller plumes are barely visible: one from the volcano Prometheus, at the 9 o'clock position on the edge of Io's disk, and one from the volcano Amirani, seen between Prometheus and Tvashtar along Io's terminator (the line dividing day and night). The plumes appear blue because of the scattering of light by tiny dust particles ejected by the volcanoes, similar to the blue appearance of smoke. In addition, the contrasting red glow of hot lava can be seen at the source of the Tvashtar plume. The images are centered at 1 degree north, 60 degrees west on Io, and 0 degrees north, 149 degrees west on Europa. The color in this image was generated using individual MVIC images at wavelengths of 480, 620 and 850 nanometers. The human eye is sensitive to slightly shorter wavelengths, from 400 to 700 nanometers, and thus would see the scene slightly differently. For instance, while the eye would notice the difference between the yellow and reddish brown colors of Io's surface and the paler color of Europa, the two worlds appear very similar in color to MVIC's longer-wavelength vision. The night side of Io appears greenish compared to the day side, because methane in Jupiter's atmosphere absorbs 850-nanometer light and makes Jupiter-light green to MVIC's "eyes." MVIC is a component of the Ralph imaging instrument. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Storm Spectra
| title |
Storm Spectra |
| date |
03.30.2007 |
| description |
These images, taken with the LEISA infrared camera on the New Horizons Ralph instrument, show fine details in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere using light that can only be seen using infrared sensors. These are "false color" pictures made by assigning infrared wavelengths to the colors red, green and blue. LEISA (Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array) takes images across 250 IR wavelengths in the range from 1.25 to 2.5 microns, allowing scientists to obtain an infrared spectrum at every location on Jupiter. A micron is one millionth of a meter. These pictures were taken at 05:58 UT on February 27, 2007, from a distance of 2.9 million kilometers (1.6 million miles). They are centered at 8 degrees south, 32 degrees east in Jupiter "System III" coordinates. The large oval-shaped feature is the well-known Great Red Spot. The resolution of each pixel in these images is about 175 kilometers (110 miles), Jupiter's diameter is approximately 145,000 kilometers (97,000 miles). The image on the left is an altitude map made by assigning the color red to 1.60 microns, green to 1.89 microns and blue to 2.04 microns. Because Jupiter's atmosphere absorbs light strongly at 2.04 microns, only clouds at very high altitude will reflect light at this wavelength. Light at 1.89 microns can go deeper in the atmosphere and light at 1.6 microns can go deeper still. In this map, bluish colors indicate high clouds and reddish colors indicate lower clouds. This picture shows, for example, that the Great Red Spot extends far up into the atmosphere. In the image at right, red equals 1.28 microns, green equals 1.30 microns and blue equals 1.36 microns, a range of wavelengths that similarly probes different altitudes in the atmosphere. This choice of wavelengths highlights Jupiter's high-altitude south polar hood of haze. The edge of Jupiter's disk at the bottom of the panel appears slightly non-circular because the left-hand portion is the true edge of the disk, while the right portion is defined by the day/night boundary (known as the terminator). These two images illustrate only a small fraction of the information contained in a single LEISA scan, highlighting just one aspect of the power of infrared spectra for atmospheric studies. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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A Brilliant Plume
| title |
A Brilliant Plume |
| date |
02.28.2007 |
| description |
The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons captured another dramatic picture of Jupiter's moon Io and its volcanic plumes, 19 hours after the spacecraft's closest approach to Jupiter on Feb. 28, 2007. LORRI took this 75 millisecond exposure at 0035 Universal Time on March 1, 2007, when Io was 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from the spacecraft. Io's dayside is deliberately overexposed to bring out faint details in the plumes and on the moon's night side. The continuing eruption of the volcano Tvashtar, at the 1 o'clock position, produces an enormous plume roughly 330 kilometers (200 miles) high, which is illuminated both by sunlight and "Jupiter light." The shadow of Io, cast by the Sun, slices across the plume. The plume is quite asymmetrical and has a complicated wispy texture, for reasons that are still mysterious. At the heart of the eruption incandescent lava, seen here as a brilliant point of light, is reminding scientists of the fire fountains spotted by the Galileo Jupiter orbiter at Tvashtar in 1999. The sunlit plume faintly illuminates the surface underneath. "New Horizons and Io continue to astonish us with these unprecedented views of the solar system's most geologically active body" says John Spencer, deputy leader of the New Horizons Jupiter Encounter Science Team and an Io expert from Southwest Research Institute. Because this image shows the side of Io that faces away from Jupiter, the large planet does not illuminate the moon's night side except for an extremely thin crescent outlining the edge of the disk at lower right. Another plume, likely from the volcano Masubi, is illuminated by Jupiter just above this lower right edge. A third and much fainter plume, barely visible at the 2 o'clock position, could be the first plume seen from the volcano Zal Patera. As in other New Horizons images of Io, mountains catch the setting Sun just beyond the terminator (the line dividing day and night). The most prominent, seen as a bright vertical line, is the edge of a plateau about 4.5 kilometers (15,000 feet) high, similar in altitude to the Colorado Rockies. Io itself has a diameter of 3,630 kilometers (about 2,250 miles). The image is centered at Io coordinates 4 degrees S, 165 degrees W. It has been processed to reduce contrast, in order to show details over the full 1000-to-1 brightness range of the original data. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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On Approach: Jupiter and Io
| title |
On Approach: Jupiter and Io |
| date |
01.08.2007 |
| description |
This sequence of images was taken on Jan. 8, 2007, with the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI), while the spacecraft was about 81 million kilometers (about 50 million miles) from Jupiter. Jupiter's volcanic moon Io is to the right, the planet's Great Red Spot is also visible. The image was one of 11 taken during the Jan. 8 approach sequence, which signaled the opening of the New Horizons Jupiter encounter. Even in these early approach images, Jupiter shows different face than what previous visiting spacecraft -- such as Voyager 1, Galileo and Cassini -- have seen. Regions around the equator and in the southern tropical latitudes seem remarkably calm, even in the typically turbulent "wake" behind the Great Red Spot. The New Horizons science team will scrutinize these major meteorological features -- including the unexpectedly calm regions -- to understand the diverse variety of dynamical processes on the solar system's largest planet. These include the newly formed Little Red Spot, the Great Red Spot and a variety of zonal features. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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A Look from LEISA
| title |
A Look from LEISA |
| date |
02.24.2007 |
| description |
On February 24, 2007, the LEISA (pronounced "Leesa") infrared spectral imager in the New Horizons Ralph instrument observed giant Jupiter in 250 narrow spectral channels. At the time the spacecraft was 6 million kilometers (nearly 4 million miles) from Jupiter, at that range, the LEISA imager can resolve structures about 400 kilometers (250 miles) across. LEISA observes in 250 infrared wavelengths, which range from 1.25 micrometers (µm) to 2.50 µm. The three images shown above from that dataset are at wavelengths of 1.27 µm (left), 1.53 µm (center) and 1.88 µm (right). The bright areas in the image frames are caused by solar radiation reflected from clouds and hazes in Jupiter's atmosphere. Dark areas correspond to atmospheric regions where solar radiation is absorbed before it can be reflected. The dark circular feature in the upper left of all three images is the shadow of Jupiter's innermost large moon, Io. Light at 1.53 µm (center frame) comes from relatively high in the atmosphere. The other two channels probe deeper atmospheric levels. Features that are bright in all three pictures come from high-altitude clouds. Features that are bright in the 1.27 and 1.88 µm channels, but darker in the 1.53-µm channel come from lower clouds. For example, there is an isolated circular feature (the "Little Red Spot") in the lower left of the 1.53-µm image. In the 1.27 and 1.88 µm data, this circular feature is surrounded by other structures. The implication is that the "Little Red Spot" is caused by a system that extends far up into the atmosphere, while other structures are lower. At closest approach to Jupiter on February 28, at a distance of about 2.5 million kilometers (1.4 million miles), LEISA's resolution was about three times better than it was on February 24. LEISA images made at that far-better resolution are still stored in the spacecraft's data recorder, awaiting downlink from New Horizons. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Jupiter: Chandra Examines Ju
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| title |
Jupiter: Chandra Examines Jupiter During New Horizons Approach |
| date |
02.28.2007 |
| description |
On February 28, 2007, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Jupiter on its ultimate journey to Pluto. This flyby gave scientists a unique opportunity to study Jupiter using the package of instruments available on New Horizons, while coordinating observations from both space- and ground-based telescopes including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. In preparation for New Horizon's approach of Jupiter, Chandra took 5-hour exposures of Jupiter on February 8, 10, and 24th. In this new composite image, data from those separate Chandra's observations were combined, and then superimposed on the latest image of Jupiter from the Hubble Space Telescope. The purpose of the Chandra observations is to study the powerful X-ray auroras observed near the poles of Jupiter. These are thought to be caused by the interaction of sulfur and oxygen ions in the outer regions of the Jovian magnetic field with particles flowing away from the Sun in the so-called solar wind. Scientists would like to better understand the details of this process, which produces auroras up to a thousand times more powerful than similar auroras seen on Earth. Following closest approach on the 28th, Chandra will continue to observe Jupiter over the next few weeks. New Horizons will take an unusual trajectory past Jupiter that takes it directly down the so-called magnetic tail of the planet, a region where no spacecraft has gone before. The sulfur and oxygen particles that dominate Jupiter's magnetosphere and originate in Io's volcanoes are eventually lost down this magnetic tail. One goal of the Chandra observations is to see if any of the X-ray auroral emissions are related to this process. By combining Chandra observations with the New Horizons data, plus ultraviolet information from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and FUSE satellite, and optical data from ground-based telescopes, astronomers hope to get a more complete picture of Jupiter's complicated system of particles and magnetic fields and energetic particles. In the weeks and months to come, astronomers will undertake detailed analysis of this bounty of data. Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SwRI/R.Gladstone et al., Optical: NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage (AURA/STScI) |
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LORRI Takes an Even Closer L
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| title |
LORRI Takes an Even Closer Look at the Little Red Spot |
| date |
02.26.2007 |
| description |
LORRI took this mosaic 9½ hours -- or not quite one Jupiter rotation period -- after snapping its previous images of the Little Red Spot on Feb 26, 2007 (see PIA09294), at a longer range of 3.5 million kilometers (2.2 million miles) and at a lower resolution of 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) per pixel. The new mosaic was obtained with the Little Red Spot closer to the center of the visible disk of Jupiter, so there is less foreshortening and better illumination. The Little Red Spot is an Earth-sized storm on Jupiter that changed its color from white to red in 2005. Swimming to the east, its clouds rotate counterclockwise (or in the anticyclonic direction), meaning that it is a high-pressure region. In that sense, the Little Red Spot is the opposite of a hurricane on Earth, which is a low-pressure region - and it is of course much larger than any hurricane on Earth. Scientists don't know exactly how or why the storm turned red -- though they speculate that the change could stem from a surge of exotic compounds from deep within Jupiter, caused by an intensification of the storm system. In particular, sulfur-bearing cloud droplets might have been propelled about 50 kilometers into the upper level of ammonia clouds, where brighter sunlight bathing the cloud tops released the red-hued sulfur embedded in the droplets - causing the storm to turn red. A similar mechanism has been proposed for the Little Red Spot's "big brother," the Great Red Spot, a massive energetic storm system that has existed for centuries. The smaller, brighter oval to the south of the Little Red Spot is another storm moving more rapidly to the east, as can be seen by comparing the previous mosaic to the newer one. Any feature that moved by as much as 100 pixels between the earlier mosaic and the new one -- as many features have done -- has shifted at an average relative speed faster than 95 miles per hour, indicating hurricane force winds. The awesome violence of the storms in Jupiter's atmosphere contrasts with the serene isolation of New Horizons' LORRI, snapping pictures from millions of miles away. "The new images are further proof that LORRI is one of the best imagers ever flown on a planetary mission," says Dr. Andy Cheng, the LORRI principal investigator from the Applied Physics Laboratory, "and more delights are yet to come. |
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New Horizons Sees Pluto (Sep
…
| title |
New Horizons Sees Pluto (Sept. 24) |
| date |
09.21.2006 |
| description |
A white arrow marks Pluto in this New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) picture taken Sept. 21, 2006. Seen at a distance of about 4.2 billion kilometers (2.6 billion miles) from the spacecraft, Pluto is little more than a faint point of light among a dense field of stars. Mission scientists knew they had Pluto in their sights when LORRI detected an unresolved "point" in Pluto's predicted position, moving at the planet's expected motion across the constellation of Sagittarius near the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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New Horizons Sees Pluto (Sep
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| title |
New Horizons Sees Pluto (Sept. 21) |
| date |
09.21.2006 |
| description |
A white arrow marks Pluto in this New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) picture taken Sept. 21, 2006. Seen at a distance of about 4.2 billion kilometers (2.6 billion miles) from the spacecraft, Pluto is little more than a faint point of light among a dense field of stars. Mission scientists knew they had Pluto in their sights when LORRI detected an unresolved "point" in Pluto's predicted position, moving at the planet's expected motion across the constellation of Sagittarius near the plane of the Milky Way galaxy. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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New Horizons Sees Pluto (Ani
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| title |
New Horizons Sees Pluto (Animation) |
| description |
The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons acquired images of the Pluto field three days apart in late September 2006, in order to see Pluto's motion against a dense background of stars. LORRI took three frames at 1-second exposures on both Sept. 21 and Sept. 24. Because it moved along its predicted path, Pluto was detected in all six images. These images are displayed using false-color to represent different intensities: the lowest intensity level is black, different shades of red mark intermediate intensities, and the highest intensity is white. The images appear pixilated because they were obtained in a mode that compensates for the drift in spacecraft pointing over long exposure times. LORRI also made these observations before operators uploaded new flight-control software in October, the upgraded software package includes an optical navigation capability that will make LORRI approximately three times more sensitive still than for these Pluto observations. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Jupiter's Rings
| title |
Jupiter's Rings |
| date |
02.24.2007 |
| description |
The New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) snapped this photo of Jupiter's ring system on February 24, 2007, from a distance of 7.1 million kilometers (4.4 million miles). This processed image shows a narrow ring, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) wide, with a fainter sheet of material inside it. The faint glow extending in from the ring is likely caused by fine dust that diffuses in toward Jupiter. This is the outer tip of the "halo," a cloud of dust that extends down to Jupiter's cloud tops. The dust will glow much brighter in pictures taken after New Horizons passes to the far side of Jupiter and looks back at the rings, which will then be sunlit from behind. Jupiter's ring system was discovered in 1979, when astronomers spied it in a single image taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. Months later, Voyager 2 carried out more extensive imaging of the system. It has since been examined by NASA's Galileo and Cassini spacecraft, as well as by the Hubble Space Telescope and large ground-based observatories. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Jupiter Ahoy!
| title |
Jupiter Ahoy! |
| date |
09.04.2006 |
| description |
The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft took this photo of Jupiter on Sept. 4, 2006, from a distance of 291 million kilometers (nearly 181 million miles) away. Visible in the image are belts, zones and large storms in Jupiter's atmosphere, as well as the Jovian moons Europa (at left) and Io and the shadows they cast on Jupiter. LORRI snapped this image during a test sequence to help prepare for the Jupiter encounter observations. It was taken close to solar opposition, meaning that the Sun was almost directly behind the camera when it spied Jupiter. This makes Jupiter appear about 40 times brighter than Pluto will be for LORRI's primary observations when New Horizons encounters the Pluto system in 2015. To avoid saturation, the camera's exposure time was kept to 6 milliseconds. This image was, in part, a test to see how well LORRI would operate with such a short exposure time. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Ganymede's Shadow
| title |
Ganymede's Shadow |
| date |
01.09.2007 |
| description |
The New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took this photo of Jupiter at 20:42:01 UTC on January 9, 2007, when the spacecraft was 80 million kilometers (49.6 million miles) from the giant planet. The volcanic moon Io is to the left of the planet, the shadow of the icy moon Ganymede moves across Jupiter's northern hemisphere. Ganymede's average orbit distance from Jupiter is about 1 million kilometers (620,000 miles), Io's is 422,000 kilometers (262,000 miles). Both Io and Ganymede are larger than Earth's moon, Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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The Little Red Spot: Closest
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| title |
The Little Red Spot: Closest View Yet |
| date |
02.26.2007 |
| description |
This is a mosaic of three New Horizons images of Jupiter's Little Red Spot, taken with the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera at 17:41 Universal Time on February 26 from a range of 3.5 million kilometers (2.1 million miles). The image scale is 17 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel, and the area covered measures 33,000 kilometers (20,000 miles) from top to bottom, two and one-half times the diameter of Earth. The Little Red Spot, a smaller cousin of the famous Great Red Spot, formed in the past decade from the merger of three smaller Jovian storms, and is now the second-largest storm on Jupiter. About a year ago its color, formerly white, changed to a reddish shade similar to the Great Red Spot, perhaps because it is now powerful enough to dredge up reddish material from deeper inside Jupiter. These are the most detailed images ever taken of the Little Red Spot since its formation, and will be combined with even sharper images taken by New Horizons 10 hours later to map circulation patterns around and within the storm. LORRI took the images as the Sun was about to set on the Little Red Spot. The LORRI camera was designed to look at Pluto, where sunlight is much fainter than it is at Jupiter, so the images would have been overexposed if LORRI had looked at the storm when it was illuminated by the noonday Sun. The dim evening illumination helped the LORRI camera obtain well-exposed images. The New Horizons team used predictions made by amateur astronomers in 2006, based on their observations of the motion of the Little Red Spot with backyard telescopes, to help them accurately point LORRI at the storm. These are among a handful of Jupiter system images already returned by New Horizons during its close approach to Jupiter. Most of the data being gathered by the spacecraft are stored onboard and will be downlinked to Earth during March and April 2007. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Jupiter Atmospheric Map
| title |
Jupiter Atmospheric Map |
| date |
01.14.2007 |
| description |
Huge cyclonic storms, the Great Red Spot and the Little Red Spot, and wispy cloud patterns are seen in fascinating detail in this map of Jupiter's atmosphere obtained January 14-15, 2007, by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI). The map combines information from 11 different LORRI images that were taken every hour over a 10-hour period -- a full Jovian day -- from 17:42 UTC on January 14 to 03:42 UTC on January 15. The New Horizons spacecraft was approximately 72 million kilometers (45 million miles) from Jupiter at the time. The LORRI pixels on the "globe" of Jupiter were projected onto a rectilinear grid, similar to the way flat maps of Earth are created. The LORRI pixel intensities were corrected so that every point on the map appears as if the sun were directly overhead, some image sharpening was also applied to enhance detail. The polar regions of Jupiter are not shown on the map because the LORRI images do not sample those latitudes very well and artifacts are produced during the map-projection process. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Tvashtar's Plume
| title |
Tvashtar's Plume |
| date |
02.28.2007 |
| description |
This dramatic image of Io was taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on New Horizons at 11:04 Universal Time on February 28, 2007, just about 5 hours after the spacecraft's closest approach to Jupiter. The distance to Io was 2.5 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) and the image is centered at 85 degrees west longitude. At this distance, one LORRI pixel subtends 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) on Io. This processed image provides the best view yet of the enormous 290-kilometer (180-mile) high plume from the volcano Tvashtar, in the 11 o'clock direction near Io's north pole. The plume was first seen by the Hubble Space Telescope two weeks ago and then by New Horizons on February 26, this image is clearer than the February 26 image because Io was closer to the spacecraft, the plume was more backlit by the Sun, and a longer exposure time (75 milliseconds versus 20 milliseconds) was used. Io's dayside was deliberately overexposed in this picture to image the faint plumes, and the long exposure also provided an excellent view of Io's night side, illuminated by Jupiter. The remarkable filamentary structure in the Tvashtar plume is similar to details glimpsed faintly in 1979 Voyager images of a similar plume produced by Io's volcano Pele. However, no previous image by any spacecraft has shown these mysterious structures so clearly. The image also shows the much smaller symmetrical fountain of the plume, about 60 kilometers (or 40 miles) high, from the Prometheus volcano in the 9 o'clock direction. The top of a third volcanic plume, from the volcano Masubi, erupts high enough to catch the setting Sun on the night side near the bottom of the image, appearing as an irregular bright patch against Io's Jupiter-lit surface. Several Everest-sized mountains are highlighted by the setting Sun along the terminator, the line between day and night. This is the last of a handful of LORRI images that New Horizons is sending "home" during its busy close encounter with Jupiter -- hundreds of images and other data are being taken and stored onboard. The rest of the images will be returned to Earth over the coming weeks and months as the spacecraft speeds along to Pluto. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Moons around Jupiter
| title |
Moons around Jupiter |
| date |
01.09.2007 |
| description |
The New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took this photo of Jupiter at 20:42:01 UTC on January 9, 2007, when the spacecraft was 80 million kilometers (49.6 million miles) from the giant planet. The volcanic moon Io is to the left of the planet, the shadow of the icy moon Ganymede moves across Jupiter's northern hemisphere. Ganymede's average orbit distance from Jupiter is about 1 million kilometers (620,000 miles), Io's is 422,000 kilometers (262,000 miles). Both Io and Ganymede are larger than Earth's moon, Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Ganymede
| title |
Ganymede |
| date |
02.27.2007 |
| description |
This is New Horizons' best image of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, taken with the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera at 10:01 Universal Time on February 27 from a range of 3.5 million kilometers (2.2 million miles). The longitude of the disk center is 38 degrees West and the image scale is 17 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel. Dark patches of ancient terrain are broken up by swaths of brighter, younger material, and the entire icy surface is peppered by more recent impact craters that have splashed fresh, bright ice across the surface. With a diameter of 5,268 kilometers (3.273 miles), Ganymede is the largest satellite in the solar system. This is one of a handful of Jupiter system images already returned by New Horizons during its close approach to Jupiter. Most of the data being gathered by the spacecraft are stored onboard and will be downlinked to Earth during March and April 2007. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Full Jupiter Mosaic
| title |
Full Jupiter Mosaic |
| description |
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. 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. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Io and Ganymede
| title |
Io and Ganymede |
| date |
01.17.2007 |
| description |
The New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took this 4-millisecond exposure of Jupiter and two of its moons at 01:41:04 UTC on January 17, 2007. The spacecraft was 68.5 million kilometers (42.5 million miles) from Jupiter, closing in on the giant planet at 41,500 miles (66,790 kilometers) per hour. The volcanic moon Io is the closest planet to the right of Jupiter, the icy moon Ganymede is to Io's right. The shadows of each satellite are visible atop Jupiter's clouds, Ganymede's shadow is draped over Jupiter's northwestern limb. Ganymede's average orbit distance from Jupiter is about 1.07 million kilometers (620,000 miles), Io's is 422,000 kilometers (262,000 miles). Both Io and Ganymede are larger than Earth's moon, Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
|
Storms and Moons
| title |
Storms and Moons |
| date |
01.24.2007 |
| description |
The New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took this 2-millisecond exposure of Jupiter at 04:41:04 UTC on January 24, 2007. The spacecraft was 57 million kilometers (35.3 million miles) from Jupiter, closing in on the giant planet at 41,500 miles (66,790 kilometers) per hour. At right are the moons Io (bottom) and Ganymede, Ganymede's shadow creeps toward the top of Jupiter's northern hemisphere. Two of Jupiter's largest storms are visible, the Great Red Spot on the western (left) limb of the planet, trailing the Little Red Spot on the eastern limb, at slightly lower latitude. The Great Red Spot is a 300-year old storm more than twice the size of Earth. The Little Red Spot, which formed over the past decade from the merging of three smaller storms, is about half the size of its older and "greater" counterpart. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Jupiter Flyby
| title |
Jupiter Flyby |
| description |
Although the main mission of the New Horizons spacecraft is to explore the Pluto system and the Kuiper Belt of icy objects, it will first fly by the solar system's largest planet, Jupiter, in 2007 - a little over a year after the planned launch date. In this artist's rendering, New Horizons is just past its closest approach to the planet. Near the Sun are Earth, Venus and Mercury. The dim crescent shape at the upper right of the Sun is Callisto, the outermost of Jupiter's four largest moons. Just left of Jupiter is Europa. *Image Credit*: Southwest Research Institute (Dan Durda)/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (Ken Moscati) |
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New Horizons Tracks an Aster
…
| title |
New Horizons Tracks an Asteroid |
| date |
06.12.2006 |
| description |
The two "spots" in this image are a composite of two images of asteroid 2002 JF56 taken on June 11 and June 12, 2006, with the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) component of the New Horizons Ralph imager. In the bottom image, taken when the asteroid was about 3.36 million kilometers (2.1 million miles) away from the spacecraft, 2002 JF56 appears like a dim star. At top, taken at a distance of about 1.34 million kilometers (833,000 miles), the object is more than a factor of six brighter. The best current, estimated diameter of the asteroid is approximately 2.5 kilometers. The asteroid observation was a chance for the New Horizons team to test the spacecraft's ability to track a rapidly moving object. On June 13 New Horizons came to within about 102,000 kilometers of the small asteroid, when the spacecraft was nearly 368 million kilometers (228 million miles) from the Sun and about 273 million kilometers (170 million miles) from Earth. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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New Horizons
| title |
New Horizons |
| description |
Artist's impression of the New Horizons spacecraft encountering a Kuiper Belt object. The Sun, more than 4.1 billion miles (6.7 billion kilometers) away, shines as a bright star embedded in the glow of the zodiacal dust cloud. Jupiter and Neptune are visible as orange and blue "stars" to the right of the Sun. Although you would not actually see the myriad other objects that make up the Kuiper Belt, they are shown here to give the impression of an extensive disk of icy worlds beyond Neptune. *Image Credit*: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI) |
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Ralph
| title |
Ralph |
| description |
Ralph is a digital imager set to fly on NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. It must be able to take sharp images in sunlight levels 1,000 times fainter than what we see on Earth. Ralph consists of three panchromatic (black-and-white) and four color imagers inside its Multispectral Visible Imaging Component (MVIC), as well as an infrared compositional mapping spectrometer called the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). Ralph's suite of seven detectors - all charge-coupled devices (CCDs), as you'd find in a digital camera - are fed by a single, sensitive magnifying telescope with a resolution more than 10 times better than the eye can see. The entire package weighs 11 kilograms (about 24 pounds) and draws 6 watts of power. *Image Credit*: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and Southwest Research Institute |
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An Eruption on Io
| title |
An Eruption on Io |
| date |
02.26.2007 |
| description |
The first images returned to Earth by New Horizons during its close encounter with Jupiter feature the Galilean moon Io, snapped with the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) at 0840 UTC on February 26, while the moon was 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers) from the spacecraft. Io is intensely heated by its tidal interaction with Jupiter and is thus extremely volcanically active. That activity is evident in these images, which reveal an enormous dust plume, more than 150 miles high, erupting from the volcano Tvashtar. The plume appears as an umbrella-shaped feature of the edge of Io's disk in the 11 o'clock position in the right image, which is a long-exposure (20-millisecond) frame designed specifically to look for plumes like this. The bright spots at 2 o'clock are high mountains catching the setting sun, beyond them the night side of Io can be seen, faintly illuminated by light reflected from Jupiter itself. The left image is a shorter exposure -- 3 milliseconds -- designed to look at surface features. In this frame, the Tvashtar volcano shows as a dark spot, also at 11 o'clock, surrounded by a large dark ring, where an area larger than Texas has been covered by fallout from the giant eruption. This is the clearest view yet of a plume from Tvashtar, one of Io's most active volcanoes. Ground-based telescopes and the Galileo Jupiter orbiter first spotted volcanic heat radiation from Tvashtar in November 1999, and the Cassini spacecraft saw a large plume when it flew past Jupiter in December 2000. The Keck telescope in Hawaii picked up renewed heat radiation from Tvashtar in spring 2006, and just two weeks ago the Hubble Space Telescope saw the Tvashtar plume in ultraviolet images designed to support the New Horizons flyby. Most of those images will be stored onboard the spacecraft for downlink to Earth in March and April. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Europa
| title |
Europa |
| description |
This image of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, the first Europa image returned by New Horizons, was taken with the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera at 07:19 Universal Time on February 27, from a range of 3.1 million kilometers (1.9 million miles). The longitude of the disk center is 307 degrees West and the image scale is 15 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel. This is one of a series of images designed to look for landforms near Europa's terminator -- the line dividing day and night -- where low Sun angles highlight subtle topographic features. Europa's fractured icy surface is thought to overlie an ocean about 100 kilometers (60 miles) below the surface, and the New Horizons team will be analyzing these images for clues about the nature of the icy crust and the forces that have deformed it. Europa is about the size of Earth's moon, with a diameter of 3,130 kilometers (1.945 miles). This is one of a handful of images of the Jupiter system already returned by New Horizons during its close approach to Jupiter. Most of the data being gathered by the spacecraft are stored onboard and will be downlinked to Earth during March and April 2007. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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Capturing Callisto
| title |
Capturing Callisto |
| date |
02.27.2007 |
| description |
The New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) captured these two images of Jupiter's outermost large moon, Callisto, as the spacecraft flew past Jupiter in late February. New Horizons' closest approach distance to Jupiter was 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles), not far outside Callisto's orbit, which has a radius of 1.9 million kilometers (1.2 million miles). However, Callisto happened to be on the opposite side of Jupiter during the spacecraft's pass through the Jupiter system, so these images, taken from 4.7 million kilometers (3.0 million miles) and 4.2 million kilometers (2.6 million miles) away, are the closest of Callisto that New Horizons obtained. Callisto's ancient, crater-scarred surface makes it very different from its three more active sibling satellites, Io, Europa and Ganymede. Callisto, 4,800 kilometers (3000 miles) in diameter, displays no large-scale geological features other than impact craters, and every bright spot in these images is a crater. The largest impact feature on Callisto, the huge basin Valhalla, is visible as a bright patch at the 10 o'clock position. The craters are bright because they have excavated material relatively rich in water ice from beneath the dark, dusty material that coats most of the surface. The two images show essentially the same side of Callisto - the side that faces Jupiter - under different illumination conditions. The images accompanied scans of Callisto's infrared spectrum with New Horizons' Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). The New Horizons science team designed these scans to study how the infrared spectrum of Callisto's water ice changes as lighting and viewing conditions change, and as the ice cools through Callisto's late afternoon. The infrared spectrum of water ice depends slightly on its temperature, and a goal of New Horizons when it reaches the Pluto system (in 2015) is to use the water ice features in the spectrum of Pluto's moon Charon, and perhaps on Pluto itself, to measure surface temperature. Callisto provided an ideal opportunity to test this technique on a much better-known body. The left image, taken at 05:03 Universal Time on February 27, 2007, is centered at 5 degrees south, 5 degrees west, and has a solar phase angle of 46 degrees. The right image was taken at 03:25 Universal Time on February 28, 2007. It is centered at 4 degrees south, 356 degrees west, and has a solar phase angle of 76 degrees. Released: April 5, 2007 Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute |
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New Horizons at Pluto
| title |
New Horizons at Pluto |
| description |
Artist's concept of the New Horizons spacecraft during a planned encounter with Pluto and its moon, Charon. The craft's miniature cameras, radio science experiment, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers and space plasma experiments would characterize the global geology and geomorphology of Pluto and Charon, map their surface compositions and temperatures, and examine Pluto's atmosphere in detail. The spacecraft's most prominent design feature is a nearly 8-foot (2.1-meter) dish antenna, through which it would communicate with Earth from as far as 4.7 billion miles (7.5 billion kilometers) away. *Image Credit*: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute (JHUAPL/SwRI) |
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Hubble Optical Image of Jupi
…
| Name |
Hubble Optical Image of Jupiter |
|
Jupiter: Chandra Examines Ju
…
| Name |
Jupiter: Chandra Examines Jupiter During New Horizons Approach |
| Category |
Solar System |
| Release Date |
March 01, 2007 |
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Hubble Monitors Jupiter in S
…
| Title |
Hubble Monitors Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby |
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Hubble Monitors Jupiter in S
…
| Title |
Hubble Monitors Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby |
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Hubble Monitors Jupiter in S
…
| Title |
Hubble Monitors Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby |
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Hubble Monitors Jupiter in S
…
| Title |
Hubble Monitors Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby |
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Hubble Monitors Jupiter in S
…
| Title |
Hubble Monitors Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby |
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Hubble Monitors Jupiter in S
…
| Title |
Hubble Monitors Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby |
|
Hubble Monitors Jupiter in S
…
| Title |
Hubble Monitors Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby |
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Hubble Monitors Jupiter in S
…
| Title |
Hubble Monitors Jupiter in Support of the New Horizons Flyby |
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STS-41D Mission Insignia
| Name of Image |
STS-41D Mission Insignia |
| Date of Image |
1984-04-24 |
| Full Description |
The official mission insignia for the 41-D Space Shuttle flight features the Discovery - NASA's third orbital vehicle - as it makes its maiden voyage. The ghost ship represents the orbiter's namesakes which have figured prominently in the history of exploration. The Space Shuttle Discovery heads for new horizons to extend that proud tradition. Surnames for the crewmembers of NASA's eleventh Space Shuttle mission encircle the red, white, and blue scene. |
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New Horizons Spacecraft Pass
…
| Title |
New Horizons Spacecraft Passes Jupiter |
| Explanation |
A new spacecraft is headed for the outer Solar System. Named New Horizons [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/mission_timeline.html ], this robotic explorer passed Jupiter last week after being launched [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060124.html ] only in early 2006. New Horizons [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons ] is being pulled [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_slingshot ] by Jupiter's gravity to a greater speed toward its next target: Pluto [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060903.html ] in 2015. During its encounter with Jupiter [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/soc/ ], New Horizons was able to capture new images of many Jovian moons [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070211.html ], Jupiter's complex and ever-changing atmosphere [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001123.html ], and Jupiter's Little Red Spot [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060505.html ], pictured above [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/022807_3.html ]. Formed over the past few years from several smaller storms, Jupiter's Little Red Spot survived [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060725.html ] a near miss with Jupiter's better-known Great Red Spot [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990806.html ] last year. The above image [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/022807_3.html ] of Jupiter covers over twice the diameter of the Earth [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050102.html ]. |
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Watch Jupiter Rotate
| Title |
Watch Jupiter Rotate |
| Explanation |
What would it be like to coast by Jupiter and watch it rotate? This was just the experience of the New Horizons [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/mission_timeline.html ] spacecraft as it approached and flew by Jupiter earlier this year. Clicking [ http://www.bergen.org/AAST/Projects/Engineering_Graphics/_EG2001/mouse/history.html ] on the image will bring up a movie of what the robotic spacecraft saw. Visible above [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/021307_1.html ] in the extensive atmosphere [ http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/jupiter/atmosphere.html ] of the Solar System's largest planet are bands and belts [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000429.html ] of light and dark clouds, as well as giant rotating storm systems [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990718.html ] seen as ovals [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990105.html ]. Other movies compiled by New Horizons [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/020707_1.html ] and other passing spacecraft [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000926.html ] have captured the clouds swirling [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001123.html ] and moving relative to themselves. Jupiter [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter ] has a diameter of about eleven times that of our Earth, and rotates once in about 10 hours. The robotic New Horizons [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons ] spacecraft continues to speed toward the outer Solar System [ http://www.nineplanets.org/overview.html ] where it is expected to approach Pluto [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060828.html ] in 2015. |
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New Horizons at Io
| Title |
New Horizons at Io |
| Explanation |
Spewed from a volcano [ http://volcano.und.edu/volcanoes.html ], a complex plume rises over 300 kilometers above the horizon of Jupiter's moon Io in this image from cameras onboard the New Horizons [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/index.php ] spacecraft. The volcano, Tvashtar [ http://www.planetaryexploration.net/jupiter/io/ lava_fountains.html ], is marked by the bright glow [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000606.html ] (about 1 o'clock) at the moon's edge, beyond the terminator or night/day shadow line. The shadow of Io cuts across the plume itself. Also capturing stunning details on the dayside surface, the high resolution image [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/ 031307.html ] was recorded when the spacecraft was 2.3 million kilometers from Io. Later it was combined with lower resolution color data [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/ 032807.html ] by astro-imager Sean Walker to produce this sharp portrait of the solar system's most active moon [ http://www.nineplanets.org/io.html ]. Outward bound at almost 23 kilometers "per second", the New Horizons spacecraft should cross the orbit of Saturn in June next year, and is ultimately destined [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/passingplanets/ passingPlanets_current.php ] to encounter Pluto [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060624.html ] in 2015. |
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Europa Rising
| Title |
Europa Rising |
| Explanation |
When passing Jupiter on your way to Pluto, what should you look for? NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov/ ] pondered just this question recently, and the response from one space enthusiast was to capture the above breathtaking moonrise [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/050107/050107_01.html ]. The unusual vista [ http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/01may_fantasticflyby.htm?list113284 ] was then actually captured by the New Horizons spacecraft [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/spacecraft/overview.html ] in February just after it buzzed past Jupiter [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter ] on its way to Pluto [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060903.html ] and the outer Solar System [ http://www.nineplanets.org/overview.html ]. Visible above is the cracked surface of Europa [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010116.html ]'s expansive ice fields, visible just behind a jumble of Jupiter's swirling clouds [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001123.html ]. Europa is one of the largest moons of Jupiter [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050911.html ] and a possible host to sub-surface liquid oceans that are real candidates for containing extra-terrestrial life [ http://people.msoe.edu/~tritt/sf/europa.life.html ]. During the Jupiter flyby, New Horizons [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons ] also carried out scientific observations of Jupiter's cloud tops [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/050107/050107_13.html ] and comparative images of Io's volcanoes and its continually changing surface [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/missionPhotos/pages/050107/050107_07.html ]. |
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Eris: More Massive than Plut
…
| Title |
Eris: More Massive than Pluto |
| Explanation |
Eris [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eris_%28dwarf_planet%29 ], a dwarf planet [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_planet ] currently orbiting the Sun at about twice Pluto's distance, has been measured [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/24 ] to have about 27 percent more mass than Pluto. The mass was calculated by timing the orbit of Eris' moon Dysnomia [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysnomia_(moon) ]. Images taken with a ground-based Keck telescope [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap971227.html ], when combined with existing images taken by Hubble Space Telescope [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010806.html ], show that Dysnomia has a nearly circular orbit lasting about 16 days. Cataloged as 2003 UB313 only a year ago, infrared images [ http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html ] also showed previously that Eris is actually larger in diameter than Pluto [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060903.html ]. The plane of Eris' orbit is well out of the plane of the Solar System [ http://nineplanets.org/overview.html ]'s planets. In the above drawing, a scientific artist has imagined Eris and Dysnomia orbiting our distant Sun. No space missions are currently planned to Eris, although the robotic New Horizons [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons ] spacecraft bound for Pluto [ http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/overview/faqs.php ] has recently passed Jupiter [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070307.html ]. |
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