| Author |
Message |
anth
Member
|
# Posted: 19 Jan 2007 04:04
Reply
The New Horizons probe may not reach The Planet Pluto until 2015. But, its encounter with the giant world of Jupiter has begun.
New Horizon's is headed towards a closest approach of Jupiter on Feb 28th 2007. In order to gain speed via a gravity assisted sling shot. Which will see it gather another 9,000 MPH needed to see it reach Pluto in July 2015. It will leave Jupiter and move onwards towards Pluto at around 52,000 MPH following its close encounter with the planet.
From now until June this year, New Horizons is officialy in "Jupiter Encounter" mode. A great way to test space craft systems, and a bonus for science. This is basically a free mission to Jupiter, and a free speed boost.
In this topic you'll be able to follow New Horizon's up to and past Jupiter. It will investigate the planets turbulent atmosphere, including a new "Super Storm" the little red spot. We will also get our best ever look at some of Jupiter's moons, including the volcanic Io.
I'm quite impressed with the images so far. Especialy considering we are over 1 month away from closest approach.
Also well worth a look is this Video captured by New Horizon's of Jupiter rotating. Possibly the best movie of its type i've seen.
MPEG Version.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/common/content/videos/JupiterRotation.mpg
Quicktime Version.
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/common....240.mov
As the space craft nears Jupiter, we can expect more detail, colour, and an array of imagery from New Horizon's state of the art instruments.
keep it here to follow the mission. 
|
anth
Member
|
# Posted: 24 Jan 2007 02:51
Reply
An update on the mission...
This "movie" strings 11 images of Jupiter captured by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on January 9, 2007, when the spacecraft was about 80 million kilometers (49.6 million miles) from the giant planet. The sequence covers a full 10-hour rotation of Jupiter, during which the moons Ganymede and Io - as well as the shadows they cast on Jupiter - move across the camera's field of view.
I am getting very excited now. New Horizon's will be at closest approach to Jupiter in little over a months time.
For comparison this view of Jupiters moon Io was taken at an identical distance to that of New Horizon's closest approach.
The above image was captured by the galileo probe in orbit of Jupiter during its long mission.
New Horizon's observations will be a huge help mapping Io in full, allowing us to observe changes on Io's volcanic surface.
New views of Europa, Jupiter's icy moon are also vital. Europa has a liquid water ocean beneath an ice crust. Who knows what changes have happened on it's surface since we last visited the Jovian system.
|
anth
Member
|
# Posted: 24 Feb 2007 03:23
Reply
New Horizon's is fast approaching Jupiter now. At the time of typing this, it is just a little under 4 days out from closest approach to the giant planet.
New Horizon's has taken several images of Jupiter already, but we can expect many, many more over the next few days. You should know by now, i'll be hanging around every NASA site to grab them, and tweak them if needed as soon as they hit the release pages.
I'll be putting together a full mission report which will feature here, and in next months tribune. I'm also hoping to release my computer animations of a flight through the jupiter system to acompany the images and data.
Here's the latest from the Jovian System ( jupiter system ) These images taken on the 10th of February.
New Horizon's is also making numerous maps, to chart Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere.
As more images are released, i'll put them up here.
|
anth
Member
|
# Posted: 27 Feb 2007 16:19
Reply
We are now on the verge of the closest approach of Jupiter by New Horizon's.
A string of images taken on january 9th by New Horizon's make up this animation showing Jupiter and Moons.
As i type, the count down stands at 5 hours 28 minutes. Due to the fact that the space craft is performing a "fly by" at high speed, rather than a more leisurely brake and orbit of Jupiter. Time is of the essence. New Horizon's will not be wasting time turning, and pointing to Earth, and missing key chances to observe.
Its priority is the 700 observations of the giant planet, its moons, ring system, and megnetosphere ( the largest object in the solar system! an invisible trail of radiation surrounding Jupiter, which if visible would appear in the night sky as something the size of the sun, but 5 times further away! )
Therefore, the images we've seen so far are only those from the approach. Any images and data gathered during the actual encounter have been stored onboard and will start to be sent back to Earth from the beginning of March through to early summer.
So, in a few days time we should start to see new images of the Jupiter system trickle through.
Two new approach images released yesterday, and taken on the 24th of February centre on Io. Jupiters Volcanic moon.
Here you can see the marked face of Io. Every dark spot is a volcano. triggered by tidal flexing of the moons interior due to its proximity to the giant planet Jupiter.
The over exposed image on the right is deliberate, and serves to high light the eruption which you can trace with your eye as coming from the massive volcano known as "Tvashtar" just to the left of the top of the moon.
It took a keen eyed lab technician working at NASA JPL to spot the first witnessed eruption on Io during the Voyager mission to Jupiter in the 1970's. New Horizon's, knowing exactly what its looking for obviously, has revealed an eruption of huge proportions in real clarity here.
A great way to kick off this close approach mission.
|
anth
Member
|
# Posted: 28 Feb 2007 03:20
Reply
This is a mosaic of three New Horizons images of Jupiter's Little Red Spot, taken with the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera at 17:41 Universal Time on February 26 from a range of 3.5 million kilometers (2.1 million miles). The image scale is 17 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel, and the area covered measures 33,000 kilometers (20,000 miles) from top to bottom, two and one-half times the diameter of Earth.
The Little Red Spot, a smaller cousin of the famous Great Red
Spot, formed in the past decade from the merger of three smaller Jovian storms, and is now the second-largest storm on Jupiter. About a year ago its color, formerly white, changed to a reddish shade similar to the Great Red Spot, perhaps because it is now powerful enough to dredge up reddish material from deeper inside Jupiter. These are the most detailed images ever taken of the Little Red Spot since its formation, and will be combined with even sharper images taken by New Horizons 10 hours later to map circulation patterns around and within the storm.
This image of Jupiter's icy moon Europa, the first Europa image returned by New Horizons, was taken with the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera at 07:19 Universal Time on February 27, from a range of 3.1 million kilometers (1.9 million miles). The longitude of the disk center is 307 degrees West and the image scale is 15 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel. This is one of a series of images designed to look for landforms near Europa's terminator - the line dividing day and night - where low Sun angles highlight subtle topographic features.
This is New Horizons' best image of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, taken with the spacecraft's Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) camera at 10:01 Universal Time on February 27 from a range of 3.5 million kilometers (2.2 million miles). The longitude of the disk center is 38 degrees West and the image scale is 17 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel. Dark patches of ancient terrain are broken up by swaths of brighter, younger material, and the entire icy surface is peppered by more recent impact craters that have splashed fresh, bright ice across the surface.
LORRI took the images as the Sun was about to set on the Little Red Spot. The LORRI camera was designed to look at Pluto, where sunlight is much fainter than it is at Jupiter, so the images would have been overexposed if LORRI had looked at the storm when it was illuminated by the noonday Sun. The dim evening illumination helped the LORRI camera obtain well-exposed images. The New Horizons team used predictions made by amateur astronomers in 2006, based on their observations of the motion of the Little Red Spot with backyard telescopes, to help them accurately point LORRI at the storm.
These are among a handful of Jupiter system images already returned by New Horizons during its close approach to Jupiter. Most of the data being gathered by the spacecraft are stored onboard and will be downlinked to Earth during March and April 2007.
Large image of Little Red Spot:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery....7_3.jpg
You can see more from this mission, and any other space projects i'm working on at my web site.
http://anthmartian.googlepages.com/thisislandearth
It's never finished, and always updated. Only featuring unique views and content. Some of which may get seen here. But, it is never simply "ripped off" from other sites. All content has been adapted, or created by me.
|
