PIA09240: Storms and Moons
Target Name: Jupiter
Is a satellite of: Sol (our sun)
Mission: New Horizons
Spacecraft: New Horizons
Instrument: LORRI
Product Size: 1035 samples x 677 lines
Produced By: Johns Hopkins University/APL
Full-Res TIFF: PIA09240.tif (701.7 kB)
Full-Res JPEG: PIA09240.jpg (67.92 kB)

Click on the image to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly cropped or reduced in size from original).

Original Caption Released with Image:

The New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took this 2-millisecond exposure of Jupiter at 04:41:04 UTC on January 24, 2007. The spacecraft was 57 million kilometers (35.3 million miles) from Jupiter, closing in on the giant planet at 41,500 miles (66,790 kilometers) per hour. At right are the moons Io (bottom) and Ganymede; Ganymede's shadow creeps toward the top of Jupiter's northern hemisphere.

Two of Jupiter's largest storms are visible; the Great Red Spot on the western (left) limb of the planet, trailing the Little Red Spot on the eastern limb, at slightly lower latitude. The Great Red Spot is a 300-year old storm more than twice the size of Earth. The Little Red Spot, which formed over the past decade from the merging of three smaller storms, is about half the size of its older and "greater" counterpart.

Image Credit:
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Image Addition Date:
2007-04-02