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Voyager 1 finds a fireball on Jupiter

Voyager 1 finds a fireball on Jupiter
Voyager 1 finds a fireball on Jupiter On March 5, 1979, having just passed its closest approach to Jupiter, Voyager 1 turned back to point its cameras at Jupiter's dark side to search for lightning. This image consists of three exposures of 35, 35, and 83 seconds; the three exposures were separated by gaps of 13 seconds, during which Voyager 1 slewed back to recenter its pointing. The range to Jupiter was 555,000 kilometers, giving a resolution of about 20 kilometers per pixel. Nearly everything that is visible here is a camera artifact: brightening toward the corners; regular pattern of black dots (reseau markings); the wide black bar is a data dropout, where the ground station failed (for whatever reason) to receive the data from Voyager 1. Near the bottom left corner of the image is a faintly brighter blob: this is a fireball, possibly from an impactor striking Jupiter. NASA / JPL