PIA01210: Jupiter's Equatorial Region in a Methane Band (Time Set 4)


Jupiter’s Equatorial Region in a Methane Band (Time Set 4)

Caption:

Mosaic of Jupiter's equatorial region at 727 nanometers (nm). The mosaic covers an area of 34,000 kilometers by 22,000 kilometers. Light at 727 nm is moderately absorbed by atmospheric methane. This image shows the features of Jupiter's main visible cloud deck and upper-tropospheric haze, with higher features enhanced in brightness over lower features. The dark region near the center of the mosaic is an equatorial "hotspot" similar to the Galileo Probe entry site. These features are holes in the bright, reflective, equatorial cloud layer where warmer thermal emission from Jupiter's deep atmosphere can pass through. The circulation patterns observed here along with the composition measurements from the Galileo Probe suggest that dry air may be converging and sinking over these regions, maintaining their cloud-free appearance. The bright oval in the upper right of the mosaic as well as the other smaller bright features are examples of upwelling of moist air and condensation.

North is at the top. The mosaic covers latitudes 1 to 19 degrees and is centered at longitude 336 degrees West. The smallest resolved features are tens of kilometers in size. These images were taken on December 17, 1996, at a range of 1.5 million kilometers by the Solid State Imaging system aboard NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

Background Info:

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.

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 Galileo Probe
Host Type Orbiter Probe
Instrument Solid-State Imaging (SSI)
Detector
Extra Keywords Atmosphere, Grayscale, Haze, Methane, Thermal
Acquisition Date
Release Date 1998-03-06
Date in Caption 1996-12-17
Image Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01210
Identifier PIA01210