Starship Asterisk*

Before and after pics of the Great Red Spot, with Red Spot Jr, and 'Baby Red' are discussed as if the passge of such storms close to GRS and their absorbtion or escape are unusual.
The movie linked to ( http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02863 ) shows that the band containing GRS has great turbulence 'downwind' of that resolves into more storms about half a circumference away. These multiple storms rotating towards the GRS are being absorbed all the time.

JOhn

I don't get it. Yesterday it was some rocks, and today it's just some clouds. They told me this is the place to go to see videos of dancing people. SO WHERE ARE THE DANCING PEOPLE? I'm so confused...

cgb wrote:I don't get it. Yesterday it was some rocks, and today it's just some clouds. They told me this is the place to go to see videos of dancing people. SO WHERE ARE THE DANCING PEOPLE? I'm so confused...

Under the red spots...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080724.html (link to today's APOD)

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/index.html (link to Galileo mission home page)

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/images/topTen09.html Thought this might be of interest

I am presently looking for info (especially images) from inside Jupiter's atmosphere but time is limited since I am at work... maybe someone could help?

emc wrote:I am presently looking for info (especially images) from inside Jupiter's atmosphere but time is limited since I am at work... maybe someone could help?

I'm pretty sure Galileo dropped a probe, but I don't think it took any pictures, just measurements. When Galileo entered Jupiter's atmosphere, it was to busy burning up too send any pictures back.

http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/jupiter_worldbook.html
http://www.nineplanets.org/jupiter.html

I didnt feel as if the cometary associated with the images was in any way trying to make the event seem unusual. It seemed a simple enough comparison to me.

Lewis

Flights to Jupiter ([url=http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/jupiter_worldbook.html]article[/url]) wrote:The craft [Galileo] released an atmospheric probe in July 1995. In December 1995, the probe plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere. The probe penetrated deep into the cloud layers and measured the amount of water and other chemicals in the atmosphere.

Thanks for the link bystander.

It is not known if Jupiter has a solid surface. How do scientists determine the mass and density if we can't probe or "see" to the core? From the article, it is clear that they do, just not clear how. Is it based on orbital mechanics by what we know about Earth's orbital relationship to the Sun?

emc wrote:How do scientists determine the mass [of a planet]?

Scientific American has an online article about that.

emc wrote:

cgb wrote:I don't get it. Yesterday it was some rocks, and today it's just some clouds. They told me this is the place to go to see videos of dancing people. SO WHERE ARE THE DANCING PEOPLE? I'm so confused...

Under the red spots...

wayyyy off base.... look for the topic with the 8 pages so far called....... *drum rolls please*...... Happy People Dancing... =/


I think Jupiter is just going through some tough times without its ProActive treatment. Jennifer Love Hewitt to the rescue!

Case wrote:Scientific American has an online article about that.

Thanks!

Watching scars the size of (planet) Earth appear on Jupiter from 16 July through 22 July, 1994 - 20 pieces of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 - was a somewhat less usual event.

Remember we didn't know if there would be anything to see at all? Remember how everybody cheered when the show started?

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/sl ... st_big.jpg

cgb wrote:I don't get it. Yesterday it was some rocks, and today it's just some clouds. They told me this is the place to go to see videos of dancing people. SO WHERE ARE THE DANCING PEOPLE? I'm so confused...

emc wrote:Under the red spots...

Arramon wrote:wayyyy off base....

It's a joke! I'm quite certain cgb was being facetious!

JohnD wrote:Before and after pics of the Great Red Spot, with Red Spot Jr, and 'Baby Red' are discussed as if the passge of such storms close to GRS and their absorbtion or escape are unusual.

I think that the survival of Red Spot Jr is more unusual than the absorption of Baby Red. Although, that Baby Red became red at all may be somewhat unusual.

emc wrote:It is not known if Jupiter has a solid surface. How do scientists determine the mass and density if we can't probe or "see" to the core?

I can ask you a similar question: "How do scientists determine the mass and density of our sun, if they can't see whether the sun has a solid core?"

The answer is e.g. Kepplers 3rd law:

a³/P² = G (M + m) / (4 π²)

where a is the semi half axis of the orbit of a small object with mass m around a heavy object with mass M, P is the period of revolution of m around M and G is the gravitational constant. &3960; needs no formal introduction.

For instance by using the earths data of the orbit oround our sun, we can determine M+m and since m is small compared to M, we find M: the solar mass.

Similarly by studying the orbit of our moon, we can determine the mass of the earth.

By studying the orbits of moons of Jupiter one can determine the mass of Jupiter and the moon. Since the moon has a negligible mass, we know Jupiters mass.

"Now i got you" i hear you say: how do we know the distance from the earth to the sun or to our moon? Basically by parallax. Stellar ocultations by the moon determine the distance from the earth to the moon. Observations of a transition of Venus over the suns limb, just like a few years ago, was the major opportunity to measure the distances in our solar system. In the latter half of the last century radar techniques took over that role.

To do the math on the earth's orbit:

a = 1.5E11 m. P = 3.16E7 s. 4π² = 39.5. G = 6.67E-11 m³/(kg s²). M+m = 2E30 kg. Look in your textbook on astronomy or Google the solar mass on the net and you will find similar values.

The pictures of the Red Spot and "Baby'--which must easily be the size of the Moon if the Red Spot is two Earths across--made me wonder how fast the clouds in the storms are moving. At that scale, the Jovian storms must make our worst hurricanes look like water swirling down the drain.

Kudos to the acne comment...

Hello Earthbelow,

This is good: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:7901 ... escription

And this: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080523.html

Astrolabe - that wikipedia video link is pretty amazing!
Earlier this month, when the spots were going to merge/collide/whatnot, I had tried to find some video of the motion of Jupiter's clouds, and the search results that google gave me were rather dated, contained broken links, and several sites wouldn't even grant access (got that "Forbidden" error??!?).
But thank you for that link - very cool! 8)