Planetwide Colour Movie | |
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona | |
The first colour
movie of Jupiter from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows what it would look
like to peel the entire globe of Jupiter, stretch it out on a wall into
the form of a rectangular map, and watch its atmosphere evolve with time.
The brief movie clip spans 24 Jupiter rotations between Oct. 31 and Nov.
9, 2000. |
The
clip consists of 14 unevenly spaced timesteps, each a true colour cylindrical
projection of the complete circumference of Jupiter, from 60 degrees south
to 60 degrees north. The maps are made by first assembling mosaics of six
images taken by Cassini's narrow-angle camera in the same spectral filter
over the course of one Jupiter rotation and, consequently, covering the
whole planet. Three such global maps -- in red, green and blue filters --
are combined to make one colour map showing Jupiter during one Jovian rotation.
Fourteen such maps, spanning 24 Jovian rotations at uneven time intervals
comprise the movie. Occasional appearances of Io, Europa, and their shadows
have not been removed. The smallest visible features at the equator are about 600 kilometers (about 370 miles) across. In a map of this nature, the most extreme northern and southern latitudes are unnaturally stretched out. |