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Images of Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) from 1999
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Radar images of newly discov
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8/26/99
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8/26/99 |
| Description |
Radar images of newly discovered 1999 JM8, an unusually large asteroid with a slow rotation rate, reveal the object's bizarre shape as it streaked past Earth in late July and early August at a close approach of 8.5 million kilometers (5.3 million miles), about 22 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. The object, thought to be several miles wide, was captured by a radar team led by Dr. Lance Benner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, after its discovery on May 13, 1999, using NASA's Goldstone radar facility in California and the Arecibo Observatory's radar in Puerto Rico. The images, clockwise from the top left, were taken on August 5, July 28, August 2 and August 1. Radar illumination is from the top and the asteroid's rotation is clockwise. The Goldstone images taken on July 28 have a vertical resolution of 38 meters per pixel and those taken on August 1 have a vertical resolution of 19 meters per pixel. The images taken by the Arecibo Observatory on August 2 and 5 have a vertical resolution of 15 meters per pixel. 1999 JM8 resembles Toutatis, a similarly sized, slowly rotating asteroid that also crosses Earth's orbit and that last flew past the planet on November 29, 1996, at a close approach of 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 million miles). Discovery of a second large Earth-crosser with a similarly slow spin rate suggests that slowly tumbling asteroids are fairly common among near-Earth objects. However, although collisions are thought to be the primary process determining asteroid spin states, astronomers do not know how these slow, complex rotation states come about. 1999 JM8 was discovered with a U. S. Air Force telescope in New Mexico that is part of MIT's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research project. Radar observations by Ostro, Benner and their team were supported by NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The Goldstone Solar System Radar is part of NASA's Deep Space Network. The Arecibo Observatory, in Puerto Rico, is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, which is operated by the Cornell University under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation and with support from NASA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ##### |
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The Saturn-bound Cassini spa
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8/16/99
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8/16/99 |
| Description |
The Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft will fly past the Earth Tuesday, August 17, at 8:28 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (August 18 at 03:28 Universal Time). Launched in October 1997, Cassini will gain a boost in speed during its Earth flyby, which occurs at an altitude of 1,166 kilometers (725 miles) over the eastern South Pacific at -23.5 degrees latitude and 231.5 degrees longitude. Two successful flybys of Venus, next week's flyby of Earth, and a flyby of Jupiter in December 2000 all give Cassini the additional speed it needs to reach Saturn in 2004. Cassini is a joint endeavor of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, and is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. [Image for NASA-JPL was created by John Aiello of JPL.] |
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JPL scientists are using spa
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8/2/99
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8/2/99 |
| Description |
JPL scientists are using space-age technology to monitor the world's largest, smelliest flower, blooming at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, CA. The flower, called Amorphophallus titanum, or the "corpse flower," smells like rotting flesh as it blooms, and its temperature rises dramatically. JPL installed an infrared camera and monitor near the flower so botanists can study the temperature fluctuations, and visitors to the Gardens can also take a peek. The camera was provided by the Space Infared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), an orbiting observatory scheduled to launch in 2001 on a mission to study the early universe and look for dust debris around nearby stars where planets may be forming. JPL manages SIRTF for NASA. |
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If NASA is involved in the s
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5/1/99
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5/1/99 |
| Description |
If NASA is involved in the search for life, shouldn't it have working alliances with life sciences institutions? Can future spacecraft be modeled after life forms, being born and growing in remote corners of the solar system? Can the search for the cure for cancer be accelerated through new applications of space program technologies? These and other such thought-provoking questions were the topic at the First NASA-National Cancer Institute (NCI) Workshop on Sensors for Bio-Molecular Signatures, held at the Doubletree Hotel in Pasadena, June 2-4. The event was designed for multi-disciplinary teams to explore ways that NASA engineers and NCI researchers can work together in coming years. In attendance, from left, were: JPL Director Dr. Edward Stone, NASA Administrator Dan Goldin, Caltech President Dr. David Baltimore, NCI Director Dr. Richard Klausner, Dr. Carol Dahl, Director, Office of Technology and Industrial Relations, NCI, and Dr. Leon Alkalai, Manager, NASA Center for Integrated Space Microsystems, JPL, coordinator of the workshop. |
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Sulfuric Acid on Europa
Frozen sulfuric acid on Jupi
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9/1/99
| Date |
9/1/99 |
| Description |
Frozen sulfuric acid on Jupiter's moon Europa is depicted in this image produced from data gathered by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. The brightest areas, where the yellow is most intense, represent regions of high frozen sulfuric acid concentration. Sulfuric acid is found in battery acid and in Earth's acid rain. This image is based on data gathered by Galileo's near infrared mapping spectrometer. Europa's leading hemisphere is toward the bottom right, and there are enhanced concentrations of sulfuric acid in the trailing side of Europa (the upper left side of the image). This is the face of Europa that is struck by sulfur ions coming from Jupiter's innermost moon, Io. The long, narrow features that crisscross Europa also show sulfuric acid that may be from sulfurous material extruded in cracks. Galileo, launched in 1989, has been orbiting Jupiter and its moons since December 1995. JPL manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington DC. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ##### |
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Airborne images of the Willo
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9/3/99
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9/3/99 |
| Description |
Airborne images of the Willow fire in Southern California's San Bernardino County, taken September 1 from a NASA ER-2 airplane, show the blaze in wavelengths that are not visible to the naked eye and would vastly improve firefighters' ability to contain them. Whereas the human eye can only see in the visible portion of the light spectrum, from 400 nanometers to 700 nanometers, NASA's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer, known as AVIRIS, measures the full spectrum of light from 400 nanometers to 2,500 nanometers. (A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter.) The color portion of the first set of images, beginning at the left, shows the Willow fire as it was seen from an aircraft on September 1. Vegetation is dark green and smoke can be seen rising from the fire. To the left of the color image is the first infrared image taken at a wavelength of 500 nanometers. The light is diffused by smoke particles and vegetation appears dark due to the absorption of chlorophyll molecules. In the next spectral image, taken at 1,000 nanometers, less of the light is scattered by the smoke and the surface near the fire is seen more clearly. At this wavelength of light, healthy vegetation appears bright because of the light scattering of leaves, while scorched vegetation appears dark. At the still longer wavelength of 1,500 nanometers, the smoke is nearly transparent. At this wavelength, AVIRIS began to clearly measure the actual light coming from the burning fire. At 2,000 nanometers, only light from the burning fires can be seen. In this image the major fires and many small hotspots can be seen. In the future, AVIRIS will continue to be used to gather valuable information on forest fire risk in both wilderness and urban areas. Currently, important research is being pursued by Drs. Dar Roberts of the University of California, Santa Barbara, Susan Ustin of the University of California, Davis and John Gamon of California State University, Los Angeles, as well as many others. AVIRIS was designed, built and is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. With full spectral coverage, AVIRIS data are used to carry out a range of research activities and applications covering ecology, geology, coastal and inland water studies, snow and ice studies, wild fires, environmental contamination and urban studies. Data collection is made possible by NASA's ER-2 aircraft, which is housed at the Dryden Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, CA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ##### |
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Airborne images of the Willo
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9/3/99
| Date |
9/3/99 |
| Description |
Airborne images of the Willow fire in Southern California's San Bernardino County, taken September 1 from a NASA ER-2 airplane, show the blaze in wavelengths that are not visible to the naked eye. This set of infrared snapshots, taken by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer, represents all of the infrared camera's 224 spectral channels, stacked in the image-cube format to depict the full AVIRIS measurement. The top and right panels show the full spectrum measured for each spatial element along the along the edge of the image. Spectroscopic or color analysis enables scientists to determine temperature variations, adjacent vegetation type and biomass, as well as the water content of leaves in the vegetation. These are important factors for understanding, controlling and extinguishing fires. AVIRIS was designed, built and is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise. Data collection are made possible by NASA's ER-2 aircraft, which is housed at the Dryden Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, CA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ##### |
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This computer-generated imag
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7/31/99
| Date |
7/31/99 |
| Description |
This computer-generated image shows the EOS-AM1 Spacecraft, with the MISR instrument on board, orbiting Earth. Direction of flight is toward the lower left. The actual locations imaged by the 9 cameras, each with 4 color bands, along the Earth's surface are illustrated here with translucent surfaces. The background star field is also realistic. (Image courtesy of Shigeru Suzuki and Eric M. De Jong, Solar System Visualizaiton Project. JPL Image # P-49081) |
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TOPEX/La Nina
The cold pool of water in th
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3/10/99
| Date |
3/10/99 |
| Description |
The cold pool of water in the Pacific known as "La Nina" still persists, although it is slowly weakening, according to scientists studying new data from the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon satellite. A new image, produced using sea-surface height measurements taken by the satellite, is available on the Internet at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/elnino/ . It shows sea-surface height on February 27, 1999 relative to normal ocean conditions, reflecting the heat content of the ocean. The low sea level or cold pool of water along the equator (shown in purple and blue), commonly referred to as La Nina, still dominates the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This La Nina, which first appeared in May through June 1998, still persists, although it is slowly weakening, scientists say. Given its persistence and present strength, the ocean cooling trend is expected to continue to exert a strong influence on global climate systems throughout the spring and into the early summer. This situation is similar to the 1997-1998 El Nino, which extended into late summer 1998. The world's oceans are the great reservoirs of heat that influence global climate because they can cool or heat the atmosphere above. This transfer of heat drives weather patterns across both land and sea. La Nina provides a physical link connecting the large, slow changes in the ocean with predictable changes in day-to-day weather. "La Nina shifts the high-altitude weather highway known as the 'jet stream,'" said Dr. William Patzert, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It funnels storm tracks to the Pacific Northwest, which has resulted in heavy rainfall and lots of snow in that region so far, as well as the upper Midwest. Much of the Southwest, by contrast, has been shielded from stormy weather and, as a result, has received significantly less precipitation than normal to date. "This year's La Nina was average in its intensity, but at its peak, it was associated with a 15- to- 20-centimeter deep trough (6 to 8 inches) in the central tropical Pacific," Patzert said. "The depression was correlated with a 2- to- 3-degree Centigrade (about 3.5 to 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit) dip in normal ocean surface temperatures." The image also shows that the very large, unusual area of higher or warmer water (shown here in red and white) in the western Pacific Ocean, from the tropics to the Gulf of Alaska, continues to expand. Although the appearance of this feature is not fully understood, it is recognized as influential to overall weather and climate. The white areas in the image indicate that the sea-surface height is between 14 and 32 centimeters (6 to 13 inches) above normal, in the red areas, sea-surface height is about 10 centimeters (4 inches) above normal. The green areas indicate normal conditions. The purple areas are between 14 to 18 centimeters (6 to 7 inches) below normal, and the blue areas are between 5 to 13 centimeters (2 to 5 inches) below normal. The TOPEX/Poseidon mission is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA. ##### |
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SeaWinds Tracks Giant Iceber
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The giant B10A iceberg, near
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9/3/99
| Date |
9/3/99 |
| Description |
The giant B10A iceberg, nearly as large as Rhode Island, is seen in this SeaWinds image as a small white dot in the upper left (approximately 10 o'clock position) between the tip of South America and the large circular continent of Antarctica. SeaWinds, launched on the QuikScat satellite in June 1999, is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. |
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A Hidden, Massive Star Clust
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| Title |
A Hidden, Massive Star Cluster Awash with Red Supergiants |
| Description |
The sky is a jewelry box full of sparkling stars in these infrared images. The crown jewels are 14 massive stars on the verge of exploding as supernovae. These hefty stars reside in one of the most massive star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. The bluish cluster is inside the white box in the large image, which shows the star-studded region around it. A close-up of the cluster can be seen in the inset photo. These large stars are a tip-off to the mass of the young cluster. Astronomers estimate that the cluster is at least 20,000 times as massive as the Sun. Each red supergiant is about 20 times the Sun's mass. The larger color-composite image was taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope for the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) Legacy project. The survey penetrates obscuring dust along the thick disk of our galaxy to reveal never-before-seen stars and star clusters. The false colors in the image correspond to infrared-light emission. The stars in the large color-composite image all appear blue because they emit most of their infrared light at shorter wavelengths. The inset image, a false-color composite, was captured by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Astronomers identified the cluster as a potential behemoth after spotting it in the 2MASS catalogue. They then used the Infrared Multi-object Spectrograph at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to analyze the cluster's colors. From that analysis, they discovered the red supergiants. They confirmed the red supergiants' pedigree by studying the colors of other red supergiants in data taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The cluster lies 18,900 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scutum. It is the first in a survey of 130 potentially massive star clusters in the Milky Way that astronomers will study over the next five years using a variety of telescopes, including the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes. The Spitzer image was taken April 4, 2004, the 2MASS image on July 4, 1999. The science team that studied the star cluster consists of Don Figer, Space Telescope Science Institute/Rochester Institute of Techology, John MacKenty, Massimo Robberto, and Kester Smith, Space Telescope Science Institute, Francisco Najarro, Instituto de Estructura de la Materia in Madrid, Spain: Rolf Kudritzki, University of Hawaii in Honolulu, and Artemio Herrero, Universidad de La Laguna in Tenerife, Spain. |
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A Hidden, Massive Star Clust
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| Title |
A Hidden, Massive Star Cluster Awash with Red Supergiants |
| Description |
The sky is a jewelry box full of sparkling stars in these infrared images. The crown jewels are 14 massive stars on the verge of exploding as supernovae. These hefty stars reside in one of the most massive star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. The bluish cluster is inside the white box in the large image, which shows the star-studded region around it. A close-up of the cluster can be seen in the inset photo. These large stars are a tip-off to the mass of the young cluster. Astronomers estimate that the cluster is at least 20,000 times as massive as the Sun. Each red supergiant is about 20 times the Sun's mass. The larger color-composite image was taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope for the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) Legacy project. The survey penetrates obscuring dust along the thick disk of our galaxy to reveal never-before-seen stars and star clusters. The false colors in the image correspond to infrared-light emission. The stars in the large color-composite image all appear blue because they emit most of their infrared light at shorter wavelengths. The inset image, a false-color composite, was captured by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Astronomers identified the cluster as a potential behemoth after spotting it in the 2MASS catalogue. They then used the Infrared Multi-object Spectrograph at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to analyze the cluster's colors. From that analysis, they discovered the red supergiants. They confirmed the red supergiants' pedigree by studying the colors of other red supergiants in data taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The cluster lies 18,900 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scutum. It is the first in a survey of 130 potentially massive star clusters in the Milky Way that astronomers will study over the next five years using a variety of telescopes, including the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes. The Spitzer image was taken April 4, 2004, the 2MASS image on July 4, 1999. The science team that studied the star cluster consists of Don Figer, Space Telescope Science Institute/Rochester Institute of Techology, John MacKenty, Massimo Robberto, and Kester Smith, Space Telescope Science Institute, Francisco Najarro, Instituto de Estructura de la Materia in Madrid, Spain: Rolf Kudritzki, University of Hawaii in Honolulu, and Artemio Herrero, Universidad de La Laguna in Tenerife, Spain. |
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A Hidden, Massive Star Clust
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| Title |
A Hidden, Massive Star Cluster Awash with Red Supergiants |
| Description |
The sky is a jewelry box full of sparkling stars in these infrared images. The crown jewels are 14 massive stars on the verge of exploding as supernovae. These hefty stars reside in one of the most massive star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. The bluish cluster is inside the white box in the large image, which shows the star-studded region around it. A close-up of the cluster can be seen in the inset photo. These large stars are a tip-off to the mass of the young cluster. Astronomers estimate that the cluster is at least 20,000 times as massive as the Sun. Each red supergiant is about 20 times the Sun's mass. The larger color-composite image was taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope for the Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraordinaire (GLIMPSE) Legacy project. The survey penetrates obscuring dust along the thick disk of our galaxy to reveal never-before-seen stars and star clusters. The false colors in the image correspond to infrared-light emission. The stars in the large color-composite image all appear blue because they emit most of their infrared light at shorter wavelengths. The inset image, a false-color composite, was captured by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). Astronomers identified the cluster as a potential behemoth after spotting it in the 2MASS catalogue. They then used the Infrared Multi-object Spectrograph at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona to analyze the cluster's colors. From that analysis, they discovered the red supergiants. They confirmed the red supergiants' pedigree by studying the colors of other red supergiants in data taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The cluster lies 18,900 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scutum. It is the first in a survey of 130 potentially massive star clusters in the Milky Way that astronomers will study over the next five years using a variety of telescopes, including the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes. The Spitzer image was taken April 4, 2004, the 2MASS image on July 4, 1999. The science team that studied the star cluster consists of Don Figer, Space Telescope Science Institute/Rochester Institute of Techology, John MacKenty, Massimo Robberto, and Kester Smith, Space Telescope Science Institute, Francisco Najarro, Instituto de Estructura de la Materia in Madrid, Spain: Rolf Kudritzki, University of Hawaii in Honolulu, and Artemio Herrero, Universidad de La Laguna in Tenerife, Spain. |
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Saturn's Ring Shadow, Then a
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| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
The image on the left was taken on Nov. 1, 1980, by NASA's Voyager spacecraft from a distance of 5.3 million kilometers (3.3 million miles). It shows a very strong narrow shadow cast on the equatorial region of Saturn's atmosphere by the rings. During the Voyager encounters, the Sun was close to the plane of the rings so that the ring shadow was very deep and localized to low latitudes. Radio signals detected by Voyager were interpreted as lightning coming from a persistent, extended storm system at low latitudes. It is possible that the ring shadow was partly responsible for generating this storm by promoting strong convection at the boundary of the colder shadowed atmosphere and the adjoining sunlit atmosphere. This image was previously released on June 19, 1999. For original caption see PIA00335. The image on the right was acquired by the Cassini spacecraft on May 10, 2004, from a distance of 27.2 million kilometers (16.9 million miles) and shows the complex set of ring shadows cast over a large region of Saturn's northern hemisphere. This shadow pattern is due to the Sun being well below the ring plane during Cassini's approach to Saturn. This image was previously release on May 25, 2004. For original caption see PIA05394. Unlike the situation when NASA's Voyager spacecraft flew by Saturn, these ring shadows are not as deep and are not localized at a very narrow range of latitudes. Should these shadows drive convection in Saturn's atmosphere, the location would likely be very much different than the near-equatorial shadow observed by the Voyagers in the early 1980s. It is possible that this very different ring shadow geometry is one reason for different morphologies of thunderstorms observed by Cassini and Voyager. Voyager observed lightning apparently from one persistent, low-latitude storm system, whereas Cassini observes lightning from storms which seem to come and go on time scales of a day or so, and perhaps from more than one storm system at a time. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the instrument team's home page, http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/plasma-wave/cassini/home.html . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Iowa |
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| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
There were two flybys of Venus in Cassini's primary trajectory, on April 26, 1998 and June 24, 1999. This image shows the spacecraft near the cloud-enshrouded Venus. By David Seal (only available electronically). |
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| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
The flyby of Earth in Cassini's primary trajectory occured on August 18, 1999, just 55 days after the second Venus flyby. This image shows the spacecraft over the South Pacific. By David Seal (only available electronically). |
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| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
Earth's Moon is captured in this image taken by Cassini's narrow angle camera as the spacecraft passed by on its way to its close approach to Earth of August 17, 1999. The spatial resolution scale of the image is approximately 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) per pixel. For higher resolution, click here. |
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Deep Space 1 Using Its Ion E
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| title |
Deep Space 1 Using Its Ion Engine |
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NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft approaching the comet 19P/Borrelly. Its primary mission was to serve as a technology demonstrator -- testing ion propulsion and 11 other advanced technologies -- successfully completed in September 1999. *Image Credit:* NASA |
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Columbia Commander Eileen Co
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| title |
Columbia Commander Eileen Collins |
| date |
07.24.1999 |
| description |
Commander Eileen Collins consults a checklist while seated at the flight deck Commander's station in the Shuttle Columbia during STS-93. *Image Credit*: NASA |
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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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Charon Discovery Image
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Charon Discovery Image |
| date |
06.22.1978 |
| description |
On 22 June 1978, an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. was making routine measurements of photographic plates taken with the 1.55-meter (61-inch) Kaj Strand Astrometric Reflector at the USNO Flagstaff Station in Arizona. The purpose of these images was to refine the orbit of the far-flung planet Pluto to help compute a better ephemeris for this distant object. Astronomer James W. Christy had noticed that a number of the images of Pluto appeared elongated, but images of background stars on the same plate did not. Other plates showed the planet as a tiny, round dot. Christy examined a number of Pluto images from the USNO archives, and he noticed the elongations again. Furthermore, the elongations appeared to change position with respect to the stars over time. After eliminating the possibility that the elongations were produced by plate defects and background stars, the only plausible explanation was that they were caused by a previously unknown moon orbiting Pluto at a distance of about 19,600 kilometers (12,100 miles) with a period of just over six days. On 7 July 1978, the discovery was formally announced to the astronomical community and the world by the IAU Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams via IAU Circular 3241. The discovery received the provisional designation "1978 P 1", Christy proposed the name "Charon", after the mythological ferryman who carried souls across the river Acheron, one of the five mythical rivers that surrounded Pluto's underworld. Over the course of the next several years, another USNO astronomer, the late Robert S. Harrington, calculated that Pluto and its newly-found moon would undergo a series of mutual eclipses and occultations, beginning in early 1985. On 17 February 1985 the first successful observation of one of these transits was made at with the 0.9-meter (36-inch) reflector at the University of Texas McDonald Observatory, within 40 minutes of Harrington's predicted time. The IAU Circular announcing these confirming observations was issued on 22 February 1985. With this confirmation, the new moon was officially named Charon. Pluto was discovered at Lowell Observatory in 1930 by the late Clyde W. Tombaugh, an amateur astronomer from Kansas who was hired by the Observatory specifically to photograph the sky with a special camera and search for the planet predicted by the Observatory's founder, Percival Lowell. Lowell had deduced the existence of a "Planet X" by studying small anomalies in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. As it turned out, Pluto's discovery was almost entirely serendipitous, Pluto's tiny mass was far too small to account for the anomalies, which were resolved when Voyager 2 determined more precise masses for Uranus and Neptune. The discovery of Charon has led to a much better understanding of just how tiny Pluto is. Its diameter is about 2274 km (1413 miles), and its mass is 0.25% of the mass of the Earth. Charon has a diameter of about 1172 kilometers (728, miles) and a mass of about 22% that of Pluto. The two worlds circle their common center of mass with a period of 6.387 days and are locked in a "super-synchronous" rotation: observers on Pluto's surface would always see Charon in the same part of the sky relative to their local horizon. Normally Pluto is considered the most distant world in the solar system, but during the period from January 1979 until February 1999 it was actually closer to the Sun than Neptune. It has the most eccentric and inclinced orbit of any of the major planets. This orbit won't bring Pluto back to its discovery position until the year 2178! *Image Credit*: U.S. Naval Observatory |
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Neptune Great Dark Spot in H
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| title |
Neptune Great Dark Spot in High Resolution |
| date |
08.30.1999 |
| description |
This photograph shows the last face-on view of the Great Dark Spot that Voyager will make with the narrow angle camera. The image was shuttered 45 hours before closest approach at a distance of 2.8 million kilometers (1.7 million miles). The smallest structures that can be seen are of an order of 50 kilometers (31 miles). The image shows feathery white clouds that overlie the boundary of the dark and light blue regions. The pinwheel (spiral) structure of both the dark boundary and the white cirrus suggest a storm system rotating counterclockwise. Periodic small scale patterns in the white cloud, possibly waves, are short lived and do not persist from one Neptunian rotation to the next. This color composite was made from the clear and green filters of the narrow-angle camera. The Voyager Mission is conducted by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications. *Image Credit*: JPL |
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Saturn - Ribbon-like Wave St
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| title |
Saturn - Ribbon-like Wave Structure in Atmosphere |
| date |
08.30.1999 |
| description |
A view of Saturn's clouds extending from 40` to 60` N latitude shows a ribbon-like wave structure in the south with small convective features marking a westward jet in the north. This image was obtained on November 10, 1980 when Voyager 1 was at a distance of 3,500,000 kilometers (2,200,000 miles) from Saturn. The smallest resolved features in this photograph are 65 kilometers (40 miles) in diameter. Images with similar resolution indicate that Saturn's circulation is somewhat different from Jupiter's. The maximum westward velocities seen on Saturn are located in the middle of the darker regions, while on Jupiter they are located at the poleward interface between belts and zones. The Voyager Project is managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA. *Image Credit*: JPL |
|
Olympus Mons, 1998
| title |
Olympus Mons, 1998 |
| date |
04.25.1998 |
| description |
Olympus Mons is a mountain of mystery. Taller than three Mount Everests and about as wide as the entire Hawaiian Island chain, this giant volcano is nearly as flat as a pancake. That is, its flanks typically only slope 20 to 50. The Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) obtained this spectacular wide-angle view of Olympus Mons on Mars Global Surveyor's 263rd orbit, around 10:40 p.m. PDT on April 25, 1998. In the view presented here, north is to the left and east is up. The spacecraft was traveling from north to south (left to right). Although the camera looks straight down (towards the nadir) and cannot be pointed to the side, the wide angle camera has such a large field of view (it sees from horizon to horizon) that, in effect, it provides side looking views. Unlike some other MOC images, that have had to be warped to provide a view as if seen from a certain direction and altitude, this image shows what the camera saw without additional processing. It is easy to imagine that you are looking out a window at the surface of Mars from about 900 km (560 miles) up. The image was taken on a cool, crisp winter morning. The west side of the volcano (lower portion of view, above) was clear and details on the surface appear very sharp. The skies above the plains to the east of Olympus Mons (upper portion of view) were cloudy. Clouds were lapping against the lower east flanks of this 26 kilometers (16 miles) high volcano, but the summit skies were clear. When Mars Global Surveyor attains its Mapping Orbit in March 1999, the MOC wide angle camera system will be used to make daily, global maps of martian clouds and weather systems. The wide angle images will resemble weather satellite pictures of Earth, and will help the Mars science teams plan their observations and test computer-driven Mars weather prediction models. Malin Space Science Systems and the California Institute of Technology built the MOC using spare hardware from the Mars Observer mission. MSSS operates the camera from its facilities in San Diego, CA. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars Surveyor Operations Project operates the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft with its industrial partner, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, from facilities in Pasadena, CA and Denver, CO. Image Note: This color picture was made using MOC red wide angle image 26301 and blue wide angle image 26302. The green channel was synthesized by averaging the red and blue bands. Color is not the true color of Mars as it would appear to the human eye (the actual colors would be more pale and contrast more subdued) *Image Credit*: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems |
|
Tvashtar Catena, Io
| title |
Tvashtar Catena, Io |
| date |
02.22.2000 |
| description |
An active volcanic eruption on Jupiter's moon Io was captured in this image taken on Feb. 22, 2000 by NASA's Galileo spacecraft. Tvashtar Catena, a chain of giant volcanic calderas centered at 60 degrees north, 120 degrees west, was the location of an energetic eruption caught in action in November 1999. A dark, "L"-shaped lava flow to the left of the center in this more recent image marks the location of the November eruption. White and orange areas on the left side of the picture show newly erupted hot lava, seen in this false color image because of infrared emission. The two small bright spots are sites where molten rock is exposed to the surface at the toes of lava flows. The larger orange and yellow ribbon is a cooling lava flow that is more than more than 60 kilometers (37 miles) long. Dark, diffuse deposits surrounding the active lava flows were not there during the November 1999 flyby of Io. This color mosaic was created by combining images taken in the near-infrared, clear, and violet filters from Galileo's camera. The range of wavelengths is slightly more than that of the human eye. The mosaic has been processed to enhance subtle color variations. The bright orange, yellow, and white areas at the left of the mosaic use images in two more infrared filters to show temperature variations, orange being the coolest and white the hottest material. This picture is about 250 kilometers (about 155 miles) across. North is toward the top and illumination from the Sun is from the west (left). *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
Handle on the Sun
| title |
Handle on the Sun |
| date |
09.14.1999 |
| description |
Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) image of a huge, handle-shaped prominence taken on Sept. 14,1999. Taken in the 304 angstrom wavelength, prominences are huge clouds of relatively cool dense plasma suspended in the Sun's hot, thin corona. At times, they can erupt, escaping the Sun's atmosphere. Emission in this spectral line shows the upper chromosphere at a temperature of about 60,000 degrees K. Every feature in the image traces magnetic field structure. The hottest areas appear almost white, while the darker red areas indicate cooler temperatures. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. See the SOHO web page at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov for more details. *Image Credit*: Courtesy of SOHO/Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) consortium. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. |
|
Borrelly's Rugged Surface
| title |
Borrelly's Rugged Surface |
| date |
09.22.2001 |
| description |
In this highest resolution view of the icy, rocky nucleus of comet Borrelly, (about 45 meters or 150 feet per pixel) a variety of terrains and surface textures, mountains and fault structures, and darkened material are visible over the nucleus's surface. This was the final image of the nucleus of comet Borrelly, taken just 160 seconds before Deep Space 1's closest approach to it. This image shows the 8-km (5-mile) long nucleus about 3417 kilometers (over 2,000 miles) away. Smooth, rolling plains containing brighter regions are present in the middle of the nucleus and seem to be the source of dust jets seen in the coma. The rugged land found at both ends of the nucleus has many high ridges along the jagged line between day and night on the comet. This rough terrain contains very dark patches that appear to be elevated compared to surrounding areas. In some places the dark material accentuates grooves and apparent faults. Stereo analysis shows the smaller end of the nucleus (lower right) is tipped toward the viewer (out of frame). Sunlight is coming from the bottom of the frame. Deep Space 1 completed its primary mission testing ion propulsion and 11 other advanced, high-risk technologies in September 1999. NASA extended the mission, taking advantage of the ion propulsion and other systems to undertake this chancy but exciting, and ultimately successful, encounter with the comet. More information can be found on the Deep Space 1 home page at http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/. Deep Space 1 was launched in October 1998 as part of NASA's New Millennium Program, which is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA. *Image Credit*: NASA/JPL |
|
Comet Borrelly Composite
| title |
Comet Borrelly Composite |
| date |
09.22.2001 |
| description |
A composite of images from NASA's Deep Space 1 spacecraft shows features of comet Borrelly's nucleus, dust jets escaping the nucleus and the cloud-like "coma" of dust and gases surrounding the nucleus. False color is used to reveal details of the jets and coma. The images were taken when Deep Space 1 was about 4,800 kilometers (3,000 miles) from Borrelly during a Sept. 22, 2001, flyby. Borrelly's nucleus is about 8 kilometers (5 miles) from end to end, so the field of view is about 40 kilometers (25 miles) across. The Sun shines from the bottom of the image. The main dust jet, seen extending toward the bottom left, heads away from the comet in a direction that is about 30 degrees off the direction straight toward the Sun from the comet. The colors show about three orders of magnitude in the brightness of the dust jets and coma. Red indicates about one-tenth the brightness as the brightness of the nucleus, blue one-one-hundredth, purple one-one-thousandth. The red bumps near the nucleus indicate where the jet resolves into three distinct, narrow jets, which likely come from discrete source points on the surface. Deep Space 1 completed its primary mission testing ion propulsion and 11 other advanced, high-risk technologies in September 1999. NASA extended the mission, taking advantage of the ion propulsion and other systems to undertake this encounter with the comet. More information can be found on the Deep Space 1 home page. Deep Space 1 was launched Oct. 24, 1998, as part of NASA's New Millennium Program, which is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The California Institute of Technology manages JPL for NASA. *Image Credit*: NASA/JPL |
|
Eclipsed Earth
| title |
Eclipsed Earth |
| date |
08.11.1999 |
| description |
Here is what the Earth looks like during a solar eclipse. The shadow of the Moon can be seen darkening part of Earth. This shadow moves across the Earth at nearly 2,000 kilometers per hour. Only observers near the center of the dark circle see a total solar eclipse - others see a partial eclipse where only part of the Sun appears blocked by the Moon. This spectacular picture of the Aug. 11, 1999 solar eclipse was one of the last ever taken from the Mir space station. Mir was decommissioned after more than ten years of use. *Image Credit*: Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales |
|
Erupting Io
| title |
Erupting Io |
| description |
This means the plume is actually about 385 kilometers (239 miles) high, just like Pele. The uncertainty in estimating the height is about 30 kilometers (19 miles), so the plume could be anywhere from 355 to 415 kilometers (221 to 259 miles) high. If this new plume deposit is just one millimeter (four one- hundredths of an inch) thick, then the eruption produced more ash than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington. These Cassini images were acquired on Jan. 2, 2001, except for the frame at the far right, which was acquired a day earlier. The Galileo images were acquired on Dec. 30 and 31, 2000. Cassini was about 10 million kilometers (6 million miles) from Io, 10 times farther than Galileo. *Image Credit*: NASA, Two tall volcanic plumes and the rings of red material they have deposited onto surrounding surface areas appear in images taken of Jupiter's moon Io by NASA's Galileo and Cassini spacecraft in late December 2000 and early January 2001. One plume, from the volcano Pele, shoots upward nearly 400 kilometers (250 miles) from the surface near Io's equator. The plume has been active for at least four years and, until now, had been far larger than any other plume seen on Io. The images also show a second plume about the same size, closer to Io's north pole. This plume had never been seen before. It is associated with a fresh eruption from the Tvashtar Catena volcanic area. The observations were made during joint studies of the Jupiter system while Cassini was passing Jupiter on its way to Saturn. Galileo passed closer to Io for higher-resolution images, and Cassini acquired images at ultraviolet wavelengths, better for detecting active volcanic plumes. The Cassini ultraviolet images, upper right, reveal two gigantic, actively erupting plumes of gas and dust. Near the equator, just the top of Pele's plume is visible where it projects into sunlight. None of it would be illuminated if it were less than 240 kilometers (150 miles) high. These images indicate a total height for Pele of 390 kilometers (242 miles). The Cassini image at far right shows a bright spot over Pele's vent. Although the Pele hot spot has a high temperature, silicate lava cannot be hot enough to explain a bright spot in the ultraviolet, so the origin of this bright spot is a mystery, but it may indicate that Pele was unusually active when the picture was taken. Also visible is a plume near Io's north pole. Although 15 active plumes over Io's equatorial regions have been detected in hundreds of images from NASA's Voyager and Galileo spacecraft, this is the first image ever acquired of an active plume over a polar region of Io. The plume projects about 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) over the limb, the edge of the globe. If it were erupting from a point on the limb, it would be only slightly larger than a typical Ionian plume, but the image does not reveal whether the source is actually at the limb or beyond it, out of view. A distinctive feature in Galileo images since 1997 has been a giant red ring of Pele plume deposits about 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) in diameter. The Pele ring is seen again in one of the new Galileo images, lower left. When the new Galileo images were returned this month, scientists were astonished to see a second giant red ring on Io, centered around Tvashtar Catena at 63 degrees north latitude. (To see a comparison from before the ring was deposited, see images PIA-01604 or PIA-02309.) Tvashtar was the site of an active curtain of high-temperature silicate lava imaged by Galileo in November 1999 and February 2000 (image PIA- 02584). The new ring shows that Tvashtar must be the vent for the north polar plume imaged by Cassini from the other side of Io. |
|
'Happy Face' Crater
| title |
'Happy Face' Crater |
| date |
03.10.1999 |
| description |
Mars Global Surveyor was greeted with this view of 'Happy Face Crater' smiling back at its camera from its location on the east side of Argyre Planitia. This crater is officially known as Galle Crater, and it is about 215 kilometers (134 miles) across. The picture was taken by the MOC's red and blue wide angle cameras. The bluish-white tone is caused by wintertime frost. Illumination is from the upper left. For more information and Viking Orbiter views of "Happy Face Crater," see http://www.msss.com/education/happy_face/happy_face.html. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
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 |
|
GOODS Chandra Deep Field Sou
…
| Name |
GOODS Chandra Deep Field South: GOODS Missing Black Hole Report: Hundreds Found! |
| Category |
Cosmology/Deep Fields/X-ray Background, Black Holes, Quasars & Active Galaxies |
| Release Date |
October 25, 2007 |
|
Mars Climate Orbiter
| Title |
Mars Climate Orbiter |
| Full Description |
The Mars Surveyor '98 Climate Orbiter is shown here during acoustic tests that simulate launch conditions. The orbiter was to conduct a two year primary mission to profile the Martian atmosphere and map the surface. To carry out these scientific objectives, the spacecraft carried a rebuilt version of the pressure modulated infrared radiometer, lost with the Mars Observer spacecraft, and a miniaturized dual camera system the size of a pair of binoculars, provided by Malin Space Science Systems, Inc., San Diego, California. During its primary mission, the orbiter was to monitor Mars atmosphere and surface globally on a daily basis for one Martian year (two Earth years), observing the appearance and movement of atmospheric dust and water vapor, as well as characterizing seasonal changes of the planet's surface. Imaging of the surface morphology would also provide important clues about the planet's climate in its early history. The mission was part of NASA's Mars Surveyor program, a sustained program of robotic exploration of the red planet, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. Lockheed Martin Astronautics was NASA's industrial partner in the mission. Unfortunately, Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the Martian atmosphere on September 23, 1999, due to a metric conversion error that caused the spacecraft to be off course. |
| Date |
05/27/1998 |
| NASA Center |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
Solar System Montage
| Title |
Solar System Montage |
| Full Description |
This is a montage of planetary images taken by spacecraft managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. Included are (from top to bottom) images of Mercury, Venus, Earth (and Moon), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The spacecraft responsible for these images are as follows: the Mercury image was taken by Mariner 10, the Venus image by Magellan, the Earth image by Galileo, the Mars image by Viking, and the Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune images by Voyager. Pluto is not shown as no spacecraft has yet visited it. The inner planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, and Mars) are roughly to scale to each other, the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) are roughly to scale to each other. Actual diameters are given below: Sun 1,390,000 km Mercury 4,879 km Venus 12,104 km Earth 12,756 km Moon 3,475 km Mars 6,794 km Jupiter 142.984 km Saturn 120,536 km Uranus 51,118 km Neptune 49,528 km Pluto 2,390 km |
| Date |
04/09/1999 |
| NASA Center |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
Evidence for Recent Liquid W
…
| Title |
Evidence for Recent Liquid Water on Mars |
| Full Description |
Gullies eroded into the wall of a meteor impact crater in Noachis Terra. This high resolution view (top left) from the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) shows channels and associated aprons of debris that are interpreted to have formed by groundwater seepage, surface runoff, and debris flow. The lack of small craters superimposed on the channels and apron deposits indicates that these features are geologically young. It is possible that these gullies indicate that liquid water is present within the martian subsurface today. The MOC image was acquired on September 28, 1999. The scene covers an area approximately 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) wide by 6.7 km (4.1 mi) high (note, the aspect ratio is 1.5 to 1.0). Sunlight illuminates this area from the upper left. The image is located near 54.8S, 342.5W. The context image (above) shows the location of the MOC image on the south-facing wall of an impact crater approximately 20 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter. The context picture was obtained by the Viking 1 orbiter in 1980 and is illuminated from the upper left. The large mound on the floor of the crater in the context view is a sand dune field. The Mars Orbiter Camera high resolution images are taken black-and-white (grayscale), the color seen here has been synthesized from the colors of Mars observed by the MOC wide angle cameras and by the Viking Orbiters in the late 1970s. A brief description of how the color was generated: The MOC narrow angle camera only takes grayscale (black and white) pictures. To create the color versions seen here, we have taken much lower resolution red and blue images acquired by the MOC's wide angle cameras, and by the Viking Orbiter cameras in the 1970s, synthesized a green image by averaging red and blue, and created a pallete of colors that represent the range of colors on Mars. We then use a relationship that correlates color and brightness to assign a color to each gray level. This is only a crude approximation of martian color. It is likely Mars would not look like this to a human observer at Mars. |
| Date |
06/22/2000 |
| NASA Center |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
FIDO Rover
| Title |
FIDO Rover |
| Full Description |
The Field Integrated Design and Operations (FIDO) rover is being used in ongoing NASA field tests to simulate driving conditions on Mars. FIDO is at a geologically interesting site in central Nevada while it is controlled from the mission control room at JPL's Planetary Robotics Laboratory in Pasadena. FIDO uses a robot arm to manipulate science instruments and it has a new mini-corer or drill to extract and cache rock samples. Several camera systems onboard allow the rover to collect science and navigation images by remote-control. The rover is about the size of a coffee table and weighs as much as a St. Bernard, about 70 kilograms (150 pounds). It is approximately 85 centimeters (about 33 inches) wide, 105 centimeters (41 inches) long, and 55 centimeters (22 inches) high. The rover moves up to 300 meters an hour (less than a mile per hour) over smooth terrain, using its onboard stereo vision systems to detect and avoid obstacles as it travels "on-the-fly." During these tests, FIDO is powered by both solar panels that cover the top of the rover and by replaceable, rechargeable batteries. |
| Date |
04/01/1999 |
| NASA Center |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
FIDO Rover Retracted Arm and
…
| Title |
FIDO Rover Retracted Arm and Camera |
| Full Description |
The Field Integrated Design and Operations (FIDO) rover extends the large mast that carries its panoramic camera. The FIDO is being used in ongoing NASA field tests to simulate driving conditions on Mars. FIDO is controlled from the mission control room at JPL's Planetary Robotics Laboratory in Pasadena. FIDO uses a robot arm to manipulate science instruments and it has a new mini-corer or drill to extract and cache rock samples. Several camera systems onboard allow the rover to collect science and navigation images by remote-control. The rover is about the size of a coffee table and weighs as much as a St. Bernard, about 70 kilograms (150 pounds). It is approximately 85 centimeters (about 33 inches) wide, 105 centimeters (41 inches) long, and 55 centimeters (22 inches) high. The rover moves up to 300 meters an hour (less than a mile per hour) over smooth terrain, using its onboard stereo vision systems to detect and avoid obstacles as it travels "on-the-fly." During these tests, FIDO is powered by both solar panels that cover the top of the rover and by replaceable, rechargeable batteries. |
| Date |
04/01/1999 |
| NASA Center |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
Global Image of Io
| Title |
Global Image of Io |
| Full Description |
NASA's Galileo spacecraft acquired its highest resolution images of Jupiter's moon Io on July 3, 1999 during its closest pass to Io since orbit insertion in late 1995. This color mosaic uses the near-infrared, green and violet filters (slightly more than the visible range) of the spacecraft's camera and approximates what the human eye would see. Most of Io's surface has pastel colors, punctuated by black, brown, green, orange, and red units near the active volcanic centers. A false color version of the mosaic has been created to enhance the contrast of the color variations. The improved resolution reveals small-scale color units which had not been recognized previously and which suggest that the lavas and sulfurous deposits are composed of complex mixtures. Some of the bright (whitish), high-latitude (near the top and bottom) deposits have an ethereal quality like a transparent covering of frost. Bright red areas were seen previously only as diffuse deposits. However, they are now seen to exist as both diffuse deposits and sharp linear features like fissures. Some volcanic centers have bright and colorful flows, perhaps due to flows of sulfur rather than silicate lava. In this region bright, white material can also be seen to emanate from linear rifts and cliffs. Comparison of this image to previous Galileo images reveals many changes due to the ongoing volcanic activity. North is towards the top of the picture and the sun illuminates the surface from almost directly behind the spacecraft. This illumination geometry is good for imaging color variations, but poor for imaging topographic shading. However, some topographic shading can be seen here due to the combination of relatively high resolution (1.3 kilometers or 0.8 miles per picture element) and the rugged topography over parts of Io. The image is centered at 0.3 degrees north latitude and 137.5 degrees west longitude. The resolution is 1.3 kilometers (0.8 miles) per picture element. The images were taken on July 3, 1999 at a range of about 130,000 kilometers (81,000 miles) by the Solid State Imaging (SSI) system on NASA's Galileo spacecraft during its twenty-first orbit. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. |
| Date |
08/27/1999 |
| NASA Center |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
Ion Engine Test Firing
| Title |
Ion Engine Test Firing |
| Full Description |
This image of a xenon ion engine, photographed through a port of the vacuum chamber where it was being tested at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, shows the faint blue glow of charged atoms being emitted from the engine. The ion propulsion engine is the first non-chemical propulsion to be used as the primary means of propelling a spacecraft. The first flight in NASA's New Millennium Program, Deep Space 1 is designed to validate 12 new technologies for scientific space missions of the next century. Ion propulsion was first proposed in the 1950s and NASA performed experiments on this highly efficient propulsion system in the 1960s, but it was not used aboard an American spacecraft until the 1990s. Deep Space 1 was launched in October 1998 as part of NASA's New Millennium Program, which is managed by JPL for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. The almost imperceptible thrust from the ion propulsion system is equivalent to the pressure exerted by a sheet of paper held in the palm of your hand. The ion engine is very slow to pick up speed, but over the long haul it can deliver 10 times as much thrust per pound of fuel as more traditional rockets. Unlike the fireworks of most chemical rockets using solid or liquid fuels, the ion drive emits only an eerie blue glow as ionized (electrically charged) atoms of xenon are pushed out of the engine. Xenon is the same gas found in photo flash tubes and many lighthouse bulbs. |
| Date |
01/01/1999 |
| NASA Center |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
Life Cycle of Stars
| Title |
Life Cycle of Stars |
| Full Description |
In this stunning picture of the giant galactic nebula NGC 3603, the crisp resolution of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures various stages of the life cycle of stars in one single view. To the upper left of center is the evolved blue supergiant called Sher 25. The star has a unique circumstellar ring of glowing gas that is a galactic twin to the famous ring around the supernova 1987A. The grayish-bluish color of the ring and the bipolar outflows (blobs to the upper right and lower left of the star) indicates the presence of processed (chemically enriched) material. Near the center of the view is a so-called starburst cluster dominated by young, hot Wolf-Rayet stars and early O-type stars. A torrent of ionizing radiation and fast stellar winds from these massive stars has blown a large cavity around the cluster. The most spectacular evidence for the interaction of ionizing radiation with cold molecular-hydrogen cloud material are the giant gaseous pillars to the right of the cluster. These pillars are sculptured by the same physical processes as the famous pillars Hubble photographed in the M16 Eagle Nebula. Dark clouds at the upper right are so-called Bok globules, which are probably in an earlier stage of star formation. To the lower left of the cluster are two compact, tadpole-shaped emission nebulae. Similar structures were found by Hubble in Orion, and have been interpreted as gas and dust evaporation from possibly protoplanetary disks (proplyds). This true-color picture was taken on March 5, 1999 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. |
| Date |
03/05/1999 |
| NASA Center |
Hubble Space Telescope Center |
|
Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage
…
| Title |
Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage for Planet Birth in New Hubble Images |
| General Information |
What is a Space Science Update? Major Hubble discoveries on NASA television ... Astronomers explain their Hubble discoveries at a press conference, called a Space Science Update (SSU), broadcast on NASA television. The SSU includes a question and answer session with members of the media. Dramatic pictures of eerie disks of dust encircling young stars are giving astronomers a new look at what may be the early formative stages of planetary systems. Although these pictures from the Hubble telescope don't show planets, the edge-on disks seen by the telescope provide some of the clearest views to date of potential planetary construction zones, say researchers. The images also offer a peek at what happened 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth and other planets in our solar system began to condense out of a pancake-shaped disk of dust and gas centered on the young Sun. These images were taken by Hubble's infrared camera. All of the objects in these pictures are extremely young stars, buried in the centers of these pictures. The wisps of material surrounding the young stars are glowing from reflected starlight. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/05/text/ ] |
|
Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage
…
| Title |
Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage for Planet Birth in New Hubble Images |
| General Information |
What is a Space Science Update? Major Hubble discoveries on NASA television ... Astronomers explain their Hubble discoveries at a press conference, called a Space Science Update (SSU), broadcast on NASA television. The SSU includes a question and answer session with members of the media. Dramatic pictures of eerie disks of dust encircling young stars are giving astronomers a new look at what may be the early formative stages of planetary systems. Although these pictures from the Hubble telescope don't show planets, the edge-on disks seen by the telescope provide some of the clearest views to date of potential planetary construction zones, say researchers. The images also offer a peek at what happened 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth and other planets in our solar system began to condense out of a pancake-shaped disk of dust and gas centered on the young Sun. These images were taken by Hubble's infrared camera. All of the objects in these pictures are extremely young stars, buried in the centers of these pictures. The wisps of material surrounding the young stars are glowing from reflected starlight. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/05/text/ ] |
|
Hubble Snapshot Captures Lif
…
| Title |
Hubble Snapshot Captures Life Cycle of Stars |
| General Information |
What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. In this stunning picture of the giant galactic nebula NGC 3603, the Hubble telescope's crisp resolution captures various stages of the life cycle of stars in one single view. This picture nicely illustrates the entire stellar life cycle of stars, starting with the Bok globules and giant gaseous pillars (evidence of embryonic stars), followed by circumstellar disks around young stars, and progressing to aging, massive stars in a young starburst cluster. The blue super-giant with its ring and bipolar outflow [upper left of center] marks the end of the life cycle. |
|
Hubble Views Ancient Storm i
…
| Title |
Hubble Views Ancient Storm in the Atmosphere of Jupiter |
| General Information |
What is Hubble Heritage? A monthly showcase of new and archival Hubble images. Go to the Heritage site. When 17th-century astronomers first turned their telescopes to Jupiter, they noted a conspicuous reddish spot on the giant planet. This Great Red Spot is still present in Jupiter's atmosphere, more than 300 years later. It is now known that it is a vast storm, spinning like a cyclone. Unlike a low-pressure hurricane in the Caribbean Sea, however, 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. However, the Red Spot does change its shape, size, and color, sometimes dramatically. Such changes are demonstrated in these Hubble telescope pictures. |
|
The Trifid Nebula: Stellar S
…
| Title |
The Trifid Nebula: Stellar Sibling Rivalry |
|
The Trifid Nebula: Stellar S
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| Title |
The Trifid Nebula: Stellar Sibling Rivalry |
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Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage
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| Title |
Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage for Planet Birth in New Hubble Images |
| General Information |
What is a Space Science Update? Major Hubble discoveries on NASA television ... Astronomers explain their Hubble discoveries at a press conference, called a Space Science Update (SSU), broadcast on NASA television. The SSU includes a question and answer session with members of the media. Dramatic pictures of eerie disks of dust encircling young stars are giving astronomers a new look at what may be the early formative stages of planetary systems. Although these pictures from the Hubble telescope don't show planets, the edge-on disks seen by the telescope provide some of the clearest views to date of potential planetary construction zones, say researchers. The images also offer a peek at what happened 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth and other planets in our solar system began to condense out of a pancake-shaped disk of dust and gas centered on the young Sun. These images were taken by Hubble's infrared camera. All of the objects in these pictures are extremely young stars, buried in the centers of these pictures. The wisps of material surrounding the young stars are glowing from reflected starlight. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/05/text/ ] |
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Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage
…
| Title |
Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage for Planet Birth in New Hubble Images |
| General Information |
What is a Space Science Update? Major Hubble discoveries on NASA television ... Astronomers explain their Hubble discoveries at a press conference, called a Space Science Update (SSU), broadcast on NASA television. The SSU includes a question and answer session with members of the media. Dramatic pictures of eerie disks of dust encircling young stars are giving astronomers a new look at what may be the early formative stages of planetary systems. Although these pictures from the Hubble telescope don't show planets, the edge-on disks seen by the telescope provide some of the clearest views to date of potential planetary construction zones, say researchers. The images also offer a peek at what happened 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth and other planets in our solar system began to condense out of a pancake-shaped disk of dust and gas centered on the young Sun. These images were taken by Hubble's infrared camera. All of the objects in these pictures are extremely young stars, buried in the centers of these pictures. The wisps of material surrounding the young stars are glowing from reflected starlight. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/05/text/ ] |
|
Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage
…
| Title |
Vast Stellar Disks Set Stage for Planet Birth in New Hubble Images |
| General Information |
What is a Space Science Update? Major Hubble discoveries on NASA television ... Astronomers explain their Hubble discoveries at a press conference, called a Space Science Update (SSU), broadcast on NASA television. The SSU includes a question and answer session with members of the media. Dramatic pictures of eerie disks of dust encircling young stars are giving astronomers a new look at what may be the early formative stages of planetary systems. Although these pictures from the Hubble telescope don't show planets, the edge-on disks seen by the telescope provide some of the clearest views to date of potential planetary construction zones, say researchers. The images also offer a peek at what happened 4.5 billion years ago when the Earth and other planets in our solar system began to condense out of a pancake-shaped disk of dust and gas centered on the young Sun. These images were taken by Hubble's infrared camera. All of the objects in these pictures are extremely young stars, buried in the centers of these pictures. The wisps of material surrounding the young stars are glowing from reflected starlight. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/05/text/ ] |
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