Chief
10-24-2007, 07:26 AM
I came to this by way of the Science Section in today's Oregonian...fascinating!!
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2007/10/15/by_jupiter/
By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff | October 15, 2007
Lightning a thousand times more powerful than ordinary bolts on Earth crackles at the poles. A red-eyed storm gathering force in southern latitudes has barely entered babyhood, but is already big enough to swallow our world - and will likely rage for centuries. Dense blobs of ionized gases, ripped by solar winds from the fifth planet, roil within a monstrous magnetic tail that lashes for tens of millions of miles into space.
Jupiter is yielding stunning images and startling data beamed earthward from a plutonium-powered spacecraft that zipped past the solar system's biggest planet earlier this year as part of an epic 3-billion mile, 9 1/2-year journey to Pluto.
"A combination of timing, trajectory, and technology gave details no probe had seen before," said Kevin H. Baines, a planetary scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "And understanding the makeup of Jupiter is an important way of understanding the makeup of the solar system - and of Earth itself."
The new views, including 200-mile-high founts of matter blasting from volcanoes on a Jovian moon to boulder-like objects tumbling along the orbital path of Jupiter's rings, didn't win much attention. The United States isn't in a space race anymore, and it's a safe bet that most Americans aren't even aware of NASA's $700 million New Horizons mission, whose compact, instrument-crammed robotic spacecraft captured Jupiter's shifting colors and tur bulent moods as part of its outward voyage to Pluto and the solar system's far frontier.
But champagne corks popped wherever astronomers gathered last week as the torrent of findings from the storm-wracked gas giant were released in a special 10-article section of Science, one of the world's most prestigious research journals.
"For us, it's like being on the cover of Rolling Stone," said S. Alan Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons mission.
NASA originally envisioned the rendezvous with Jupiter as just an opportunity to gain speed for the spacecraft, launched in January 2006. Scientists exploited Jupiter's powerful gravitational field to generate a "slingshot" effect to accelerate the piano-sized vessel's speed to some 52,000 miles per hour and shave three years off its travel time to Pluto.
Intersecting Jupiter's path was "mainly to give a power boost, plus an opportunity to check out instruments and spacecraft systems," said Stern in an interview. "Instead, the encounter produced almost an embarrassment of riches."
Among them: findings from the first wild ride down Jupiter's unexplored magnetotail, the plume of charged particles - whipped by million-mile-per hour solar winds and magnetic fields - that forms the "largest cohesive structure in the solar system," according to one of the Science articles.
(Images are online at pluto.jhuapl.edu.)
**SCHNIPP**
I have that link open right now, and it enables you to download and view close up, a number of incredible, high resolulution images that the columnist is describing. You could lose yourself in the detail of some of these shots...
Be sure to check out the pictures of Io, and all of the volcanic activity. they have some excellent comparisons between what Cassini found seven years ago on Io, and what New Horizons found in February 2007...amazing to say the least!
Well worth some time to spend perusing this one...
;D
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2007/10/15/by_jupiter/
By Colin Nickerson, Globe Staff | October 15, 2007
Lightning a thousand times more powerful than ordinary bolts on Earth crackles at the poles. A red-eyed storm gathering force in southern latitudes has barely entered babyhood, but is already big enough to swallow our world - and will likely rage for centuries. Dense blobs of ionized gases, ripped by solar winds from the fifth planet, roil within a monstrous magnetic tail that lashes for tens of millions of miles into space.
Jupiter is yielding stunning images and startling data beamed earthward from a plutonium-powered spacecraft that zipped past the solar system's biggest planet earlier this year as part of an epic 3-billion mile, 9 1/2-year journey to Pluto.
"A combination of timing, trajectory, and technology gave details no probe had seen before," said Kevin H. Baines, a planetary scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "And understanding the makeup of Jupiter is an important way of understanding the makeup of the solar system - and of Earth itself."
The new views, including 200-mile-high founts of matter blasting from volcanoes on a Jovian moon to boulder-like objects tumbling along the orbital path of Jupiter's rings, didn't win much attention. The United States isn't in a space race anymore, and it's a safe bet that most Americans aren't even aware of NASA's $700 million New Horizons mission, whose compact, instrument-crammed robotic spacecraft captured Jupiter's shifting colors and tur bulent moods as part of its outward voyage to Pluto and the solar system's far frontier.
But champagne corks popped wherever astronomers gathered last week as the torrent of findings from the storm-wracked gas giant were released in a special 10-article section of Science, one of the world's most prestigious research journals.
"For us, it's like being on the cover of Rolling Stone," said S. Alan Stern, principal investigator for the New Horizons mission.
NASA originally envisioned the rendezvous with Jupiter as just an opportunity to gain speed for the spacecraft, launched in January 2006. Scientists exploited Jupiter's powerful gravitational field to generate a "slingshot" effect to accelerate the piano-sized vessel's speed to some 52,000 miles per hour and shave three years off its travel time to Pluto.
Intersecting Jupiter's path was "mainly to give a power boost, plus an opportunity to check out instruments and spacecraft systems," said Stern in an interview. "Instead, the encounter produced almost an embarrassment of riches."
Among them: findings from the first wild ride down Jupiter's unexplored magnetotail, the plume of charged particles - whipped by million-mile-per hour solar winds and magnetic fields - that forms the "largest cohesive structure in the solar system," according to one of the Science articles.
(Images are online at pluto.jhuapl.edu.)
**SCHNIPP**
I have that link open right now, and it enables you to download and view close up, a number of incredible, high resolulution images that the columnist is describing. You could lose yourself in the detail of some of these shots...
Be sure to check out the pictures of Io, and all of the volcanic activity. they have some excellent comparisons between what Cassini found seven years ago on Io, and what New Horizons found in February 2007...amazing to say the least!
Well worth some time to spend perusing this one...
;D