Jupiter Polar Winds Movie |
NASA/JPL/Southwest Research Institute |
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Bands of eastward and westward winds on Jupiter appear as concentric rotating circles in this movie composed of Cassini spacecraft images that have been re-projected as if the viewer were looking down at Jupiter's north pole and the planet were flattened. The sequence covers 70 days, from October 1 to December 9, 2000. Cassini's narrow-angle camera captured the images of Jupiter's atmosphere in the near-infrared region of the spectrum. What is surprising
in this view is the coherent nature of the high-latitude flows, despite
the very chaotic, mottled and non-banded appearance of the planet's polar
regions. This is the first extended movie sequence to show the coherence
and longevity of winds near the pole and the features blown around the
planet by them. |