Jupiter's Belt-Zone Boundary (Near-infrared filter)

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 756 nanometers (nm). Sunlight at 756 nm penetrates deep into Jupiter's troposphere before being absorbed or scattered by clouds to the Galileo spacecraft. This wavelength reveals the features of the lower visible cloud deck.

Jupiter's atmospheric circulation is dominated by alternating jets of east/west (zonal) winds. The bands have different widths and windspeeds but have remained constant as long as telescopes and spacecraft have measured them. A strong eastward jet is made visible as it stretches the clouds just below the center of this mosaic. The maximum windspeed of this jet is 128 meters/second, or 286 miles/hour.

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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