Slashdot Mirror
Hubble Photographs Jupiter's New "Scar"
BearRanger writes "Calibration of new systems in the Hubble Space Telescope (installed in May by Shuttle Atlantis astronauts) were interrupted to take pictures of the new 'scar' near the south pole of Jupiter. The scar is believed to have been caused by the impact of an asteroid or small comet with the gas giant, which we discussed last Sunday. Hubble's return to service will be delayed by this interruption, but NASA says that rare events such as this warrant the delay. This is only the second recorded impact of an object with Jupiter."
Original reports said it was the size of the pacific ocean. I am guessing that the size is changing pretty constantly, though.
looks like chromatic aberration to me. it is an optical problem and can be controlled with software, but pretty common on anything with any kind of optical magnification.
zosxavius photography
about the size of the Pacific Ocean, according to one astronomer's estimates.
Galileo was EOL'ing anyway. But perhaps the New Horizons probe could be re-oriented? Not sure if that would give any useful additional data, however.
-----
As for the new Hubble camera - awesome! Now all we need to do is build a new Hubble (sorry, Webb, but your wavelengths are a little too limited) that can be serviced robotically so it no longer has to rely on shuttle missions for fixes and upgrades. Or maybe we can just launch a whole bunch of smaller, cheaper ones, that together act as a much larger telescope once properly processed. Then the only upgrade cost is in launching another one to complement the rest.
How about time-lag between the R,G,B components? The Wide Field Camera 3 takes grayscale pictures with different filters. These are combined on Earth to create a color picture. The grayscale pictures for each R,G,B component aren't taken at the exact same time.
This is nothing compared to the shots from the Galileo spacecraft. We would be getting awesome shots of this impact if NASA hadn't suicided the probe in 2003.
We may not have been able to see anything. Probes like Galileo have thrusters to move themselves about while in orbit. These thrusters use fuel. Galileo was launched in 1989, and swung by Venus, Earth (twice) and a couple of asteroids, using fuel for course corrections for each flyby. In 1995 it had to perform various orbital insertion burns to enter Jupiter's orbit, again using fuel. Galileo then changed orbit several times to visit the various moons of Jupiter, each thrust burning off more fuel. This lasted until 2003, when the propellant tanks were dry. There was just enough fuel to ditch the craft into Jupiter (so it wouldn't accidentally crash into Europa, and contaminate possible life there).
So had it been left in orbit, with no manoeuvring fuel left with which to make course corrections or even re-orient the craft itself, it might possibly have survived the radiation and magnetic fields, the dozens of moons and moonlets, and the strong gravitational pull of Big J. But even if it survived to this day, without fuel, there is no attitude correction. It probably would have been pointing in the wrong direction.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Earth is much closer to Jupiter than the New Horizon is. Distance between Earth and Jupiter is about 4 AU while New Horizon is currently some 11 AU away from Jupiter.
"Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
Jupiter's gravity well is far bigger in influence than all the other planets combined. Jupiter contains 72% of the total mass orbiting the Sun. Small objects are influenced profoundly by Jupiter's gravity no matter where it is in its orbit.
As an example of its magnitude...Jupiter's barycenter of mass with the Sun actually lies at 1.020 Solar radii... not physically within the Sun itself.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law