Astronomy Picture of the Day |
APOD: 1999 July 18 - Jupiter from Voyager
Explanation:
This picture of the planet Jupiter was taken by the
Voyager 1 spacecraft as
it passed the planet in 1979.
Jupiter, a gas giant planet with no solid surface,
is the largest planet in the Solar System and is made mostly of the hydrogen and helium.
Clearly visible in the above photo is the
Great Red Spot, a giant,
hurricane-like
storm system that rotates with the
clouds of Jupiter.
It is so large three complete Earths could fit inside it.
Astronomers have recorded
this giant storm on Jupiter for over 300 years.
APOD: 1999 August 6 - Hubble Tracks Jupiter's Great Red Spot
Explanation:
It is a hurricane twice the size of the
Earth.
It has been raging at least as long as
telescopes could see it,
and shows no signs of slowing. It is Jupiter's Great Red Spot,
the largest swirling storm system in the
Solar System.
Like most astronomical phenomena, the
Great Red Spot
was neither predicted nor immediately
understood after its discovery.
Still today, details of how and why the
Great Red Spot changes its shape, size, and color
remain mysterious.
A better understanding of the
weather on Jupiter may help contribute to the better understanding of weather here on Earth.
In the pictures on the left, the Hubble Space Telescope has captured
Jupiter's Great Red Spot in various states over the past several years.
APOD: 1997 October 30 - 3-D View Of Jupiter's Clouds
Explanation:
Every day is a cloudy day
on Jupiter, the Solar System's reigning
gas giant.
This 3-dimensional visualization presents a simplified model view from
between Jovian cloud decks based on imaging and spectral data recorded
by the Galileo spacecraft.
The separation between
the cloud layers
and the height variations have
been exaggerated.
The upper cloud layer is haze a few tens of miles thick.
Heights in the lower cloud layers have been color coded;
light bluish clouds are high and thin,
reddish clouds are low, and white clouds are high and thick.
Streaks in the lower layer suggestively lead to a dark blue area,
a relatively clear, dry region
similar to the site where
Galileo's atmospheric probe
made the first entry into a gas giant planet's atmosphere
on December 7th, 1995.
Authors & editors:
Robert
Nemiroff
(MTU)
& Jerry Bonnell (USRA)
NASA Technical Rep.:
Jay Norris.
Specific rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA/
GSFC
&
Michigan Tech. U.