Starship Asterisk*

Jupiter's Clouds from New Horizons

Explanation: The New Horizons spacecraft took some stunning images of Jupiter on its way out to Pluto. Famous for its Great Red Spot, Jupiter is also known for its regular, equatorial cloud bands, visible through even modest sized telescopes. The above image, horizontally compressed, was taken in 2007 near Jupiter's terminator and shows the Jovian giant's wide diversity of cloud patterns. On the far left are clouds closest to Jupiter's South Pole. Here turbulent whirlpools and swirls are seen in a dark region, dubbed a belt, that rings the planet. Even light colored regions, called zones, show tremendous structure, complete with complex wave patterns. The energy that drives these waves surely comes from below. New Horizons is the fastest space probe ever launched, has now passed the orbits of Saturn and Uranus and is on track to reach Pluto in 2015.

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Nice. We often forget how beautiful storms and clouds are; all we need is a new point of view.

Another great APOD. Visually striking and educational.

I kinda curious about the release date on the following. http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/gallery/science ... mage_id=63
I mean; how can the release date b 1969? Am I missing something?

Yeah, if you follow the links, ALL the pictures taken by LORRI in early 2007, show a release date of 1969 at the top of the page. Looks like someone has let the -cat out of the bag-. TIME TRAVEL.

orin stepanek wrote:I mean; how can the release date b 1969? Am I missing something? :?

On most computer systems, the time is represented by an integer which counts the number of seconds since 1 January 1970. So when you see a date of 31 December 1969 on a webpage, you are almost always seeing the consequencea of a date field in a database that has not been set to a valid value.

Could someone explain what causes the small horizontal streaks in this image? They appear to be on top of the cloud bands, running perpendicular to the cloud bands. Their length is generally less than the width of a cloud band, and there are more of them visible towards the lower portion of the image (near the horizon). They (and also some bright spots) appear incongruous with the cloud layers. I'm guessing they are artefactual since they seem to run in perfect line with the borders of the image itself, but I'm curious to know exactly what causes them.

Bill D wrote:Could someone explain what causes the small horizontal streaks in this image? They appear to be on top of the cloud bands, running perpendicular to the cloud bands. Their length is generally less than the width of a cloud band, and there are more of them visible towards the lower portion of the image (near the horizon). They (and also some bright spots) appear incongruous with the cloud layers. I'm guessing they are artefactual since they seem to run in perfect line with the borders of the image itself, but I'm curious to know exactly what causes them.

Hard to say for sure. They are a form of column defect, but without more images from the same camera for comparison, I can't tell if they represent fixed defects or simply problems from imperfect calibration. Some of the bright spots look like cosmic ray hits on the the detector or the structure around it. The single column artifacts look a bit like blooming, and may come from single hot pixels bleeding into adjacent pixels.

Chris Peterson wrote:

orin stepanek wrote:I mean; how can the release date b 1969? Am I missing something?

On most computer systems, the time is represented by an integer which counts the number of seconds since 1 January 1970. So when you see a date of 31 December 1969 on a webpage, you are almost always seeing the consequencea of a date field in a database that has not been set to a valid value.

Thanks Chris!

orin stepanek wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:

orin stepanek wrote:I mean; how can the release date b 1969? Am I missing something?

On most computer systems, the time is represented by an integer which counts the number of seconds since 1 January 1970. So when you see a date of 31 December 1969 on a webpage, you are almost always seeing the consequencea of a date field in a database that has not been set to a valid value.

Thanks Chris!

ditto

I just hope I'm alive when New Horizons reaches Pluto

montylc2001 wrote:
I just hope I'm alive when New Horizons reaches Pluto

I just hope that New Horizons is alive when it reaches Pluto

neufer wrote:

montylc2001 wrote:
I just hope I'm alive when New Horizons reaches Pluto

I just hope that New Horizons is alive when it reaches Pluto

I hope that Pluto is a planet again when New Horizons reaches it.

neufer wrote:

montylc2001 wrote:
I just hope I'm alive when New Horizons reaches Pluto

I just hope that New Horizons is alive when it reaches Pluto

It's incredible how long it takes for spacecraft to reach far places. It'd be lucky if it wasn't hit by an asteroid or something on its way.

It's not that lucky. I mean, they already looked out for that stuff when they sent it there. As we know it, space really is just that... mostly empty space.

TNT wrote:It's incredible how long it takes for spacecraft to reach far places. It'd be lucky if it wasn't hit by an asteroid or something on its way.

As the few missions to asteroids have demonstrated, you have to work really hard to encounter one out there in space. The risk of any probe colliding with a small body is very, very small.

A much bigger risk is a simple electronics failure during the long trip... which is one reason they shut down most of the systems during the flight.

orin stepanek wrote:I kinda curious about the release date on the following. New Horizons - Images. I mean; how can the release date b 1969? Am I missing something?

It seems they changed the date to “October 9, 2007” now.