Today on Galileo - December 16, 1996
Jupiter is the object of Galileo's attention for today's set of observations. The UVS instrument performs an observation of Jupiter's aurora and an observation of the darkside of Jupiter's atmosphere at a fixed longitude. (In contrast to the fixed local time observation, the fixed longitude observation follows along with the selected longitude as it rotates around). The auroral observation will be looking at northern aurora on both the day and night sides of Jupiter while the fixed longitude map will contribute to the construction of hydrogen distribution maps without the influence of direct sunlight.
During the middle of the day, the flight team members will send the second part of the encounter sequence of commands to the spacecraft. This set of commands will begin to execute at the end of Tuesday and will take the spacecraft through the early hours of next Sunday. Encounter sequences are typically split into two pieces because as one file they would not fit in the main computer's memory.
Toward the end of the day, the NIMS instrument performs three of a series of six observations designed to provide a global map of the lit side of Jupiter in five different colors (or wavelengths).