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als RSS Feed abonnieren📚 High-Resolution Telescope Images Solve a Mystery About Jupiter's Great Red Spot
💡 Newskategorie: IT Security Nachrichten
🔗 Quelle: science.slashdot.org
Researchers have collected some of the highest resolution images of Jupiter ever obtained from earth -- by combining images from Hawaii's Gemini North telescope with images from the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Juno probe (currently orbiting Jupiter). The images -- assembled from three years of observations -- "confirm that dark spots in the famous Great Red Spot are actually gaps in the cloud cover and not due to cloud color variations," explains an announcement from the Gemini Observatory. Gemini North's Near Infrared Imager (NIRI) allows astronomers to peer deep into Jupiter's mighty storms, since the longer wavelength infrared light can pass through the thin haze but is obscured by thicker clouds high in Jupiter's atmosphere. This creates a "jack-o-lantern"-like effect in the images where the warm, deep layers of Jupiter's atmosphere glow through gaps in the planet's thick cloud cover... A large number of very short exposure images are obtained and only the sharpest images, when the Earth's atmosphere is briefly stable, are used... The ultra-sharp Gemini infrared images complement optical and ultraviolet observations by Hubble and radio observations by the Juno spacecraft to reveal new secrets about the giant planet... The detailed, multiwavelength imaging of Jupiter by Gemini and Hubble has, over the past three years, proven crucial to contextualizing the observations by the Juno orbiter, and to understanding Jupiter's wind patterns, atmospheric waves, and cyclones. The two telescopes, together with Juno, can observe Jupiter's atmosphere as a system of winds, gases, heat, and weather phenomena, providing coverage and insight much like the network of weather satellites meteorologists use to observe Earth. The resolution was so high, the astronomer leading the observations says their telescope "could resolve the two headlights of a car in Miami, seen from New York City."
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