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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."
After Art Bell hyped the Hale-Bopp as spaceship with Major Ed Dames, the Heaven's Gate cult offed themselves, thinking they were going home to their reward. I bet Dames and fellow snake oil salesman, Richard C. Hoagland are spinning this one for some sort of prophecy. Watch Hoagland tie his 19.5 Cosmic Math and Masonic rituals into it.
If you are in a cult, now is the time to turn down the bowl of apple sauce and free pairs of Nike.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
This is a pretty great image. I don't remember shots of jupiter looking anywhere near this good before. I really can't wait to see what the new hubble is capable of producing.
zosxavius photography
We really need to watch that scar ...see if it starts to grow.
We may want to start thinking of visiting Europa while we can.
Just putting that out there.
I suspect that in almost any other gov't agency, some PHB with a clipboard would have said, "Sorry, but you're not pointing that thing anywhere until you've finished calibrating it."
"The new camera, installed by the astronauts aboard space shuttle Atlantis in May, is not yet fully calibrated. While it is possible to obtain celestial images, the camera's full power has yet to be seen."
I don't know, but I am just imagining the same words being uttered on the Death Star, albeit in a slightly different context.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Has there been any mention of the size of that scar? I know the red spot can hold 2-3 earths but what size is that scar?
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
The resolution of the full size image of Hubble is incredible.
I have always been a fan of the Hubble site and still remain today.
I was heart broken, as well as many others, a few years back when bush wanted to scrap Hubble.
I hope we learned from that near mistake and keep the thing going for years to come.
It will only continue to provide new discoveries with each passing year.
A very valuable asset to science.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
The "wide field" (low-magnification) camera on Hubble gives a much narrower field and higher magnification than a sizable (10") amateur scope at its highest power.
Hubble really, really rocks.
Okay, first there's a mysterious "scar" on Jupiter, and now the tides are inexplicably higher than normal. (http://www.newsobserver.com/news/health_science/story/1620869.html). I don't know about anybody else, but I'm waiting for the aliens to land.
Not the best 2001/2010 reference there, I admit, but at least one - not off topic!
The proper question would have been whether the resolution was high enough to make out whether the dark blob is make up from little obelisks that multiply.
My god, it's full of scars!
You never expect irony, do you?
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@iyfwrestling
Yes, Jupiter is fulfilling it's purpose as a comet sink. Glad our Repillian overlords put it there?
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
excuse my ignorance, but what causes the impact area to be black?
Will likely have a LOT more fuel and much longer life. I suspect that all future probes will be using ion thrusters combined with some long life nukes. VASMIR is going to be a major change for such probes even though I am not sure that it is the ideal choice for small thrusters. As it is, we will have much larger rockets that are capable of sending probes like New Horizon, Dawn etc. on a fast trip loaded with LOTS of fuel esp. if using these thrusters.
In fact, if America was not hurting financially as bad as we are, I think that it would be useful to see us send a new set of voyagers using a ares V/Direct launcher, a great deal more nukes, and obviously a lot of fuel for a vasmir. We could get outside of the solar system in a relatively short period of time, while doing a LOT more exploration.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
A black expanding spot on Jupiter... where have I heard that before? I guess it's happening a year earlier than Arthur C. Clarke predicted?
Or, put another way, "this is the second time in 15 years that amateur astronomers have discovered an object colliding with a planet - collisions which, if they had occurred here, would have sterilised if not utterly destroyed the Earth".
hmm.. Hubble.. Uranus... Porn! Yes the hi-resolution makes sense now.
Sig: I don't spell check and this is legit. This was written while I was drunk, and quite possibly with m eyes closed, b
I don't ever remember hearing Bush claimed to have wanted to scrap Hubble. Perhaps you could point to proof of this? Now NASA did want to scrap it because of diverting funding to other projects and the reletive safety concerns involved with a mission to repair it's orbit and a few other things. But that was NASA and not Bush.
"But that was NASA and not Bush."
This was discussed here quite a bit back when it was going on. Perhaps I erroneously pointed my middle finger at bush holding him directly accountable for such a retarded idea. But considering bush controlled what funds NASA got, and for some stupid reason they decided to scrap one of the most important scientific devices of all time.
Even though a NASA administrator caught the bulk of flack from the community over the idea of scrapping Hubble, you know as well as I that the decision came from the "decider". And as usual, it's always some pion that has to fall on his sword to protect the #1 asshole that thought up the idea in the first place.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Wow, even in admitting you were wrong, you have to find a way to "Blame Bush".
Fact of the matter is that Hubble was funded and NASA execs made the decision to use the funding in other ways. That was stopped probably by people closer to Bush more then anything. All this pointing to Bush for everything you don't agree with or don't like isn't healthy when you are basically making shit up to do so. You need to get over him and get over yourself.
Possible Conjecture on my part: :-)
1) For over 100 years Jupiter has been observed with fairly good equipment and we have not see such large changes such as these impacts.
2) It is possible we are in the middle of a Comet Swarm. The frequency of these sorts of large impacts seems to be out of the ordinary, considering the last one was in 1992. (Shoemaker-Levy)
3) What is caused by this? Could it be the alignment of our Solar System with respect to the Galactic plane:
http://www.optcorp.com/edu/articleDetailEDU.aspx?aid=1114
I bring this to the communities attention because the gravitational behaviour of the Galaxy as a whole, seems to be at odds with how we understand gravity on a large scale.
For example, when Astronomers look at the velocities of Stars on the outside of the Galactic Core, too many of them are moving at a speed or the same speed as those closer inward.
Which should not be the case.
http://www.astrophysicsspectator.com/topics/galaxies/Spiral.html
This could suggest that we are in the middle of a comet swarm.
Which of course, would be right on schedule as we ARE over due for a major impact.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WGF-47314XP-1C0&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=ab7211f1bb44a0d677303b1cc08eb8c8
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.