![]() Slightly larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system. Jupiter's icy moon Ganymede can be seen transiting the giant planet at lower right. Though this vortex is big enough to swallow Earth, it has actually shrunken to the smallest size it has ever been over observation records dating back 150 years. Jupiter's legendary Great Red Spot takes center stage in this view. This image was taken on November 12, 2022. Sulfur takes on various hues at different temperatures, which is why Io's surface is so colorful. The moon's molten interior is overlaid by a thin crust through which the volcanoes eject material. These volcanoes were first discovered when the Voyager 1 spacecraft flew by in 1979. Hubble's resolution is so sharp that it can see Io's mottled-orange appearance, related to its numerous active volcanoes. The orange moon Io photobombs this view of Jupiter's multicolored cloud tops, casting a shadow toward the planet's western limb. Strong color differences indicate that Hubble is seeing different cloud heights and depths as well. ![]() Activity is also seen interior to these storms in the 1990s Hubble didn't see any cyclones or anticyclones with built-in thunderstorms, but these storms have sprung up the last decade. The staggered pattern of anticyclones and cyclones prevents individual storms from merging. If the storms get close enough to each other, in the very unlikely event of a merger, they could build an even larger storm, potentially rivaling the current size of the Great Red Spot. This is a wave pattern of nested anticyclones and cyclones, locked together like in a machine with alternating gears moving clockwise and counterclockwise. ![]() A prominent string of alternating storms is visible, forming a "vortex street" as some planetary astronomers call it. The forecast for Jupiter is stormy weather at low northern latitudes. Inaugurated in 2014, the telescope's Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy ( OPAL) Program has been providing us with yearly views of the giant planets. In this way Hubble complements observations from other spacecraft such as Juno, currently orbiting Jupiter the retired Cassini mission to Saturn, and the Voyager 1 and 2 probes, which collectively flew by all four giant planets between 19. NASA spacecraft missions to the outer planets have given us a close-up look at these atmospheres, but Hubble's sharpness and sensitivity keeps an unblinking eye on a kaleidoscope of complex activities over time. Four Successful Women Behind the Hubble Space Telescope's AchievementsĮver since its launch in 1990, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has been an interplanetary weather observer, keeping an eye on the largely gaseous outer planets and their ever-changing atmospheres.Characterizing Planets Around Other Stars.Measuring the Universe's Expansion Rate.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. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The movie gives scientists a unique overall view of global weather patterns, as opposed to the limited view of weather satellite images. The four images are part of the Galileo Earth spin movie, a 256-frame time-lapse motion picture that shows a 25-hour period of Earth's rotation and atmospheric dynamics. Galileo's closest approach (960 kilometers, or 597 miles, above the Earth's surface) to the Earth was on December 8, 1990, 3 days before these pictures were taken.Įach of these images is a color composite, made up using images taken through red, green, and violet filters. This gravity assist increased Galileo's speed around the Sun by about 5.2 kilometers per second (or 11,600 miles per hour) and substantially redirected Galileo as required for its flybys of the asteroid Gaspra in October 1991 and Earth in 1992. These images were taken during Galileo's first Earth flyby. Taken at six-hour intervals on December 11, 1990, at a range of between 2 and 2.7 million kilometers (1.2 to 1.7 million miles). South America may be seen in the first frame (top left), the great Pacific Ocean in the second (bottom left), India at the top and Australia to the right in the third (top right), and Africa in the fourth (bottom right). In each frame, the continent of Antarctica is visible at the bottom of the globe.
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