Jupiter's Belt-Zone Boundary (Methane filter, 886 nm)

NOTE: This JPEG image is made available in order to share with the public the excitement of new discoveries being made via the NASA/JPL Galileo spacecraft. Galileo scientists are in the process of calibrating and validating this data. The full digital image necessary for scientific analysis will be released within one year of receipt of this orbit's last data.

This image is available only on the WWW; it is not available in hardcopy or other forms.

Mosaic of a belt-zone boundary near Jupiter's equator. The images that make up the four quadrants of this mosaic were taken within a few minutes of each other and show Jupiter's appearance at 886 nanometers (nm). Sunlight at 886 nm is strongly absorbed by atmospheric methane. This absorption lowers the total amount of scattered light detected by the Galileo spacecraft. The light that Galileo detects, however, is scattered from clouds high in Jupiter's troposphere and stratosphere. Most of the features of the lower cloud deck are invisible, while the structure of the upper diffuse cloud layer is apparent. Because the total amount of light reflected towards the spacecraft at this wavelength is low, the background 'noise' from the camera and cosmic ray impacts give the mosaic a grainy appearance.

The edge of the planet runs along the right side of the mosaic. North is at the top. The mosaic covers latitudes -13 to +3 degrees and is centered at longitude 280 degrees West. The smallest resolved features are tens of kilometers in size. These images were taken on November 5th, 1996, at a range of 1.2 million kilometers by the Solid State Imaging system aboard NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

Launched in October 1989, Galileo entered orbit around Jupiter on December 7, 1995. The spacecraft's mission is to conduct detailed studies of the giant planet, its largest moons and the Jovian magnetic environment. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.

This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web, on the Galileo mission home page at URL http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo.

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