Images from the Hubble Space Telescope were used to create these animations of the rotation of the outer planets as seen from Earth.
Video Credit: STScI
The Rotation of the Outer Planets
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Tag Archives: Jupiter
Listening to Ganymede
This animation provides auditory and visual presentations of data collected by the Juno spacecraft’s Waves instrument during a flyby of the Jovian moon Ganymede. The animation is shorter than the duration of the flyby because the Waves data is edited onboard to reduce telemetry requirements.
The abrupt change to higher frequencies around the midpoint of the recording occurs as the spacecraft moves from one region of Ganymede’s magnetosphere to another. The actual frequency range of the data is from 10 to 50 kHz. The animation audio has been shifted to a lower range audible to human ears.
Video Credit: NASA
The Outer Planets
Video Credit: NASA
Callisto
Callisto is the one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, the second largest. Its surface is old, showing the highest coverage by impact craters of any large body in the Solar System, but it has no volcanoes or large mountains. Callisto’s surface is one large ice-field, littered with cracksand craters from billions of years of collisions. This picture was taken in 2001 by the Galileo spacecraft.
Image Credit: NASA
Jupiter Rotates
This video was captured over five nights earlier this month by a mid-sized telescope on an apartment balcony in Paris, France.
Video Credit: Credit & Copyright: JL Dauvergne
Music: Benoit Reeves
Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)
Water Vapor on Europa
Video Credit: NASA
Planning a Grand Tour
I made a very minor contribution to one of the instruments on Lucy. This is a long term mission. I’ll be 76 when the the spacecraft makes its main belt flyby, almost 81 when it makes the last flyby in the Greek camp of Trojan asteroids, and 85 when it flies through the Trojan camp.
Video Credit: NASA
Hubble Looks at Jupiter’s Red Spot
Video Credit: NASA
Lucy and the Lagrange Points
Video Credit: NASA
Juno Flies By Ganymede and Jupiter
Video Credit: NASA
ALMA Looks at Jupiter
Video Credit: NRAO
Ganymede Close Up
The Juno Cam aboard the Juno spacecraft snapped this picture on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede on the 7th.
Image Credit: NASA
Jupiter and the Comet Shoemaker-Levy Impact
This animation was created using images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994. The impact sites of the fragments of comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 are visible as dark brown spots in the planet’s southern hemisphere.
Video Credit: ESO / NASA / ESA
Jupiter’s Aurora
This video clip depicts the evolution of a dawn storm in Jupiter’s polar aurora. It was assembled using data from the from the Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument aboard the Juno spacecraft.
Credits: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / UVS /ULiège
A Trojan Comet
Video Credit: NASA
You Can’t See This From Here
This image was taken by the Juno spacecraft as it was moving away from the closest approach to the Jupiter on its 10th orbit around the planet. It was a bit more than 100,000 km above the cloud tops and almost directly over the South Pole when the image was taken last December.
Image Credit: NASA
Jupiter and Saturn: The Movie
Video Credit: Thanakrit Santikunaporn (National Astronomical Institute of Thailand)
Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)
It’s Raining Mushballs on Jupiter
Here’s NASA’s explanation of this video: This animation takes the viewer high into a large storm high in Jupiter’s atmosphere, where a mushy water-ammonia particle (represented in green) descends through the atmosphere, collecting water ice in the process. The process creates a “mushball” – a special hailstone with a center made partially of liquid water-ammonia mush and a solid water-ice crust exterior. Within about 10 to 60 minutes (depending on their sizes), these mushballs reach Jupiter’s deeper layers, below the water clouds, where they rapidly melt and evaporate. Theoretical models predict these mushballs could grow to about 4 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter, weigh up to 2 pounds (1 kilogram), and reach speeds up to 450 mph (700 kph) during their descent.
Video Credit: NASA / JPL—Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / CNRS
The Star of Bethlehem
Roughly every twenty years, the paths of Jupiter and Saturn line up in the night sky, and the planets appear close together, an event called the Grand Conjunction. One occurs this evening. Look toward the southwest just after sunset, and if the sky is clear, you’ll see Jupiter and Saturn almost perfectly aligned, only about 0.1 degree apart. They haven’t come this close since 1623, but they were nearly aligned with the Sun and hard to see that year. The last time they were this close and relatively far from the Sun was in 1226.
Grand Conjunctions occurred three times in 7 BC and again as a triple conjunction with Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars in early 6 BC. You can find more about those conjunctions and the Star of Bethlehem here.
Hubble and the Outer Planets
Video Credit: NASA
You Can’t See This From Here
This view of Jupiter as seen from space above its south pole was constructed from images taken during the Cassini spacecraft’s flyby on the way to Saturn. When I first published this image in 2014, it was a rare view of Jupiter. Since then, the Juno spacecraft has been orbiting Jupiter and sending back views from almost every possible angle.
Image Credit: NASA
A Flight Over Jupiter
Video Credit: NASA
Jupiter in Visible Light and UV
From time to time, the Hubble Space Telescope takes observes the four gas giant planets in the Solar System in a ongoing survey of the outer planets’ weather systems. It took the last images of Jupiter in that series on 25 August. This video opens with a view of Jupiter in visible light. Then, a false-color UV view wipes across the planet, followed by a wipe back to visible light.
Video Credit: NASA
Lightning and Mushballs on Jupiter
This animation takes the viewer on a simulated journey into Jupiter’s exotic high-altitude electrical storms. It was assembled from an image of from the Juno spacecraft and computer animation. The second video explains what we think causes these storms.
Video Credit: NASA
Video Credit: NASA
A Mission to the Trojan Asteroids
I made a minor contribution to the L’Ralph instrument on Lucy. It’s a very long mission. I’ll be 85 when Lucy flies by Trojan L5 binary asteroid (617) Patroclus-Menoetius in 2033.
Video Credit: NASA