This Week on Galileo - July 7-13, 1997
Playback continues during what will be the longest cruise period of Galileo's orbital tour. Unlike last week's playback schedule, no fields and particles observations of Jupiter's magnetotail share downlink time with playback. Once again, playback from the Callisto-9 encounter contains no Callisto observations.
Observations from the multi-part feature track campaigns of the Great Red Spot and a plume region are one of the major themes of this week's playback, with images from NIMS (Near Infrared Mapping Spectrometer), SSI (Solid State Imaging camera) and PPR (Photopolarimeter Radiometer). Recall that plume heads are believed to be formed by relatively narrow columns of rising air that tend to flatten out when they can go no higher in Jupiter's atmosphere. The NIMS playback data includes high spectral resolution 5 and 3 micron night time maps of trace species within the Great Red Spot.
Other Jupiter data are also played back this week. Playback starts of the NIMS Jupiter cylindrical map of the north latitude hotspot region; this data will help assess lower-tropospheric properties such as phosphine and water abundance variation with longitude, and 5-micron variability of ammonia cloud opacity. NIMS also returns additional Jupiter observations, with four maps of the southern pole region that examine vertical and spatial structure. PPR plays back a North/South stripe observation.
Io observations by NIMS, SSI and PPR will be played back this week. The NIMS data includes monitoring of selected volcanic regions (Loki, Pele, and Kanehekili) to look for variations in their appearance over time. NIMS also returns dayside monitoring of Io designed to look for chemical changes on the satellite such as the distribution of sulfur dioxide. More NIMS playback, this of thermal monitoring of Io's nightside, will help scientists to search for and map hot spots, thermal anomalies and outbursts on the satellite's surface. This observation also included Io's limb in order to search for auroral effects. PPR plays back Io polarimetry observations.
SSI will return observations of the plume from Io's volcano Pele, and images from SSI's continuing Io surface monitoring campaign. The plume observations provide other scientific benefits, including surface monitoring of active or transient events and stereo monitoring of opaque plumes. Surface monitoring serves two purposes: as part of Io topographic mapping campaign, these images should settle debates over the longitudinal distribution of mountains on Io, the latitudinal distribution of calderas and the global distribution of layered terrain. In addition, the tour-wide campaign monitors the surface of Io for detection, mapping, and compositional characterization of new volcanic or volatile deposits or removals.
The final item on this week's playback schedule is the continuing return of observations of some of the minor satellites (Thebe, Amalthea, Adrastea and Metis). These SSI global observations will help to determine morphology and surface composition.