The Planetary Society Blog
By Emily Lakdawalla
More Europa images from New Horizons
May. 7, 2007 | 08:14 PDT | 15:14 UTC
After the May 1 press conference, the New Horizons team quietly released a lot more raw images from the Jupiter flyby on their Science Operations Center website. These include most of the remaining images of Europa that the spacecraft took during the flyby. I've updated my flyby animation, so you can see Europa growing in size then shrinking in phase as New Horizons approaches and passes it. There are two frames in the middle where Europa is cut off. One of them seems to have been mis-targeted -- Europa was nearly off the frame -- and the other is the image in which Europa was rising from behind Jupiter (check out my previous New Horizons post for the full picture); I blacked out Jupiter in this animation so that its sudden flash wouldn't be distracting. New Horizons' flyby of EuropaThis animation consists of eleven images of Europa returned during the New Horizons flyby. Europa grows in New Horizons' field of view as the spacecraft approaches, then its phase turns from full to half and finally to a crescent as the spacecraft passes by. The animation currently contains 11 of the 13 observations of Europa performed by New Horizons; the remaining images have not yet been released to the public. Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Animation by E. Lakdawalla |
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