PIA01083: Dynamics of Jupiter's Great Red Spot in the Near-infrared


Dynamics of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot in the Near-infrared

Caption:

Dynamics of Jupiter's Great Red Spot in the NIR filter (756 nm) of the Galileo imaging system. Each of the three frames is a mosaic of six images that have been map-projected to a uniform grid of latitude and longitude. North is at the top. There is a nine-hour separation between the first two frames and seventy minutes between the next two. All of the images were taken on June 26, 1996. The Red Spot is 20,000 km long and has been followed by observers on Earth since the telescope was invented 300 years ago. It is a huge storm made visible by variations in the composition of the cloud particles and the amount of cloud cover. Winds in the outer part of the Red Spot reach 250 mph while the center remains quiescent. These Galileo data will help scientists understand what drives this storm and why it persists for so many years.

Background Info:

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. JPL is an operating division of California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Jupiter
System Jupiter
Target Type Planet
Mission Galileo
Instrument Host Galileo Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Solid-State Imaging (SSI)
Detector
Extra Keywords Atmosphere, Grayscale, Infrared, Map, Movie, Storm
Acquisition Date
Release Date 1997-11-04
Date in Caption 1996-06-26
Image Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01083
Identifier PIA01083