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This map is part of a group release of cylindrical and polar stereographic
projections of Jupiter. For the other maps see PIA07782 and PIA07784.
These color maps of Jupiter were constructed from images taken by the
narrow-angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 11 and 12,
2000, as the spacecraft neared Jupiter during its flyby of the giant
planet. Cassini was on its way to Saturn. They are the most detailed
global color maps of Jupiter ever produced. The smallest visible features
are about 120 kilometers (75 miles) across.
The maps are composed of 36 images: a pair of images covering Jupiter's
northern and southern hemispheres was acquired in two colors every hour
for nine hours as Jupiter rotated beneath the spacecraft. Although the
raw images are in just two colors, 750 nanometers (near-infrared) and 451
nanometers (blue), the map's colors are close to those the human eye would
see when gazing at Jupiter.
The maps show a variety of colorful cloud features, including parallel
reddish-brown and white bands, the Great Red Spot, multi-lobed chaotic
regions, white ovals and many small vortices. Many clouds appear in
streaks and waves due to continual stretching and folding by Jupiter's
winds and turbulence. The bluish-gray features along the north edge of
the central bright band are equatorial "hot spots," meteorological systems
such as the one entered by NASA's Galileo probe. Small bright spots within
the orange band north of the equator are lightning-bearing thunderstorms.
The polar regions are less clearly visible because Cassini viewed them at
an angle and through thicker atmospheric haze (such as the whitish
material in the south polar map -- see PIA07784.
Pixels in the rectangular map cover equal increments of planetocentric
latitude (which is measured relative to the center of the planet) and
longitude, and extend to 180 degrees of latitude and 360 degrees of
longitude.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
