The Starbase One Astronomy & Space Collection/STARBASE_ONE.ISO/hst/jupgalpr.txt

Text File | 1996-01-12 | 2KB | 38 lines

FOR RELEASE: November 9, 1995

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC95-46


HUBBLE VIEWS THE GALILEO PROBE ENTRY SITE ON JUPITER

[left] - This Hubble Space Telescope image of Jupiter was taken on Oct.
5, 1995, when the giant planet was at a distance of 534 million miles
(854 million kilometers) from Earth.  The arrow points to the predicted
site at which the Galileo Probe will enter Jupiter's atmosphere on
December 7, 1995.  At this latitude, the eastward winds have speeds of
about 250 miles per hour (110 meters per second).  The white oval to
the north of the probe site drifts westward at 13 miles per hour (6
meters per second), rolling in the winds which increase sharply toward
the equator.  The Jupiter image was obtained with the high resolution
mode of Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2).  Because the
disk of the planet is larger than the field of view of the camera,
image processing was used to combine overlapping images from three
consecutive orbits to produce this full disk view of the planet.

[right] - These four enlarged Hubble images of Jupiter's equatorial
region show clouds sweeping across the predicted Galileo probe entry
site, which is at the exact center of each frame (a small white dot has
been inserted at the centered at the predicted entry site).  The first
image (upper left quadrant) was obtained with the WFPC2 on Oct. 4, 1995
at (18 hours UT).  The second, third and fourth images (from upper
right to lower right) were obtained 10, 20 and 60 hours later,
respectively.  The maps extend +/- 15 degrees in latitude and
longitude.  The distance across one of the images is about three Earth
diameters (37,433 kilometers).  During the intervening time between the
first and fourth maps, the winds have swept the clouds 15,000 miles
(24,000 kilometers) eastward.

Credit: Reta Beebe (New Mexico State University), and NASA