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JOIN

The Planetary Society Blog

By Emily Lakdawalla

Six views of Jupiter

Feb. 16, 2007 | 13:20 PST | 21:20 UTC

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While doing some research on Jupiter for the upcoming New Horizons flyby, I came across the following montage of Six views of Jupiter, assembled by Bjorn Jonsson. A total of eight spacecraft have visited Jupiter; ironically, one of the only two that didn't produce a full-disk global view was also the only orbiter, Galileo. While some of the differences among these images can be attributed to the different characteristics of the cameras on each spacecraft, most of the differences represent real changes in the position, size, extent, and color of Jupiter's atmospheric structures. I am reading up on all the terminology in order to work on an explainer. Stay tuned for that!

Click to enlarge >

Six spacecraft views of Jupiter
A total of eight spacecraft have visited Jupiter to date, and Six of them returned global images. (Because of the problem with its high-gain antenna, the Galileo orbiter returned no global views; Ulysses carried no camera.) These Six images show how Jupiter's atmospheric features are generally constant but can differ in detail with time. For example, the Great Red Spot, which has existed for at least three hundred years, has been steadily shrinking and becoming more round (less oval) with time. The Voyagers and Cassini found turbulent regions to the northeast of the Great Red Spot, while the area was clear to the Pioneers and New Horizons. The dark belts and bright zones shift slightly up and down and change in relative brightness over time. Credit: NASA / JPL / SSI / JHUAPL / SWrI / Bjorn Jonsson