Via Emily comes this totally incredible image of Jupiter:
Click it for the enormous 2300×3400 pixel image. Wow.
The New Horizons mission to Pluto used Jupiter for a gravity assist in February and took this image. It used a filter that lets in near-infrared light (specifically at 8900 Angstroms, just outside the range of the human eye) that is preferentially absorbed by methane gas. Jupiter has a lot of methane in its atmosphere, so this image is essentially a map of where the methane is: bright regions have only a little (the methane is thin and lets light out) and dark regions have a lot (more methane means more absorption of the light). Emily has more details at the link above, and you can learn stuff from it.
But it’s also OK just to sit back and marvel at the beauty of the solar system. And in case you’re curious: fully 5 Earths could fit across this image from the left hand part of Jupiter to the day/night dividing line on the right.
August 14th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Rather off-topic
ne of the Google ads that showed up next to the article on the BA blog when I pulled it up was:
These Love Spells Work
links to honest spell workers that get fast results
love-spells-magic.com
Rather incongruous on this blog, no? (:-}
And on-topic: Is there any speculation about the source of the methane “spots” between the bands in the northern and southern hemisphere?
Les (Friendly Airplane Asylum flack)
August 14th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Is there any speculation about the source of the methane “spots†between the bands in the northern and southern hemisphere?
Cow farts?
J/P=?
August 14th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Wow, that’s really round.
August 14th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
It has to be fake. Where are the stars?
(Just kidding…)
August 14th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
There is so musch to love about that picture.
Though every once in a while when I’m looking at pictures of Jupiter, I get the feeling that somebody was a little heavy-handed with the Photoshop “clone” tool whith the whorls while moving horizontally along the latitude bands, or with the white spots vertically in the mid-Southern latitudes!
August 14th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Ahh, Jupiter… Seeing photo images of any of the planets, especially our system’s magnificent gas giants, never fails to make me smile. Such beauty, such wonder.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Emily’s site is amazing in the wealth of information, as well as wealth of wonder, it produces. The Jovian system is just awesome.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:37 am
“And in case you’re curious: fully 5 Earths could fit across this image from the left hand part of Jupiter to the day/night dividing line on the right.â€
An arbitrary number of Earths could of course fit across the image, as long as you put them far enough away.
Sorry, I’ve got this thing about wooly thinking.
August 15th, 2007 at 1:04 am
It took me a while to visualize this right. Normally, in image analysis brighter values = more and darker = less. Since it’s a methane absorption image, I guess it makes sense, but my brain keeps wanting to reverse it.
CJSF
August 15th, 2007 at 1:49 am
Absolutely stunning! I like the fractal-like patterns around the equator.
August 15th, 2007 at 7:24 am
“An arbitrary number of Earths could of course fit across the image, as long as you put them far enough away.”
But anything more than five Earths would be behind Jupiter and we couldn’t see ‘em.
Very cool pic. Be better in colour, though, but I guess that would miss the point.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:55 am
Yummy methane. Just what we need to run our dirty little civilization,,,into the ground. I wonder when Standard Oil will seek gov. funding to go and retrieve some???
GAry 7
From Stephen Webbs book(Where is Everybody) I note that Jupiter, in its particular location and mass, seems to be essential for the formation of rocky bodies with H2O that exist within the suns life zone. Maybe we should be worshiping it???(snicker)
August 15th, 2007 at 10:07 am
Cool!
Tip it 90 degrees and it makes pretty swell dual monitor wallpaper for my Ubuntu machine.
Tom
August 15th, 2007 at 11:16 am
I receive this blog usually via e-mail. Both Classmates.com and netflix put their ads right across the place where you click to go to the next post so if I read comments then I have to either make a comment or close out and come back in to go to the next post. This has been happening for a week or so and I’ve commented about it before. It is extremely frustrating. I hope it can be fixed……. D.
August 16th, 2007 at 11:30 am
darnit – all these years I’ve been spelling it messianic.
August 16th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
[...] my favorite planet. This is from from the Bad Astronomy Blog and was taken by the New Horizons mission to [...]