Pluto Probe Makes Discoveries at Jupiter 125
Riding with Robots writes "No, it's not an accident due to a metric-to-English-units error. In February, the New Horizons probe passed through the Jupiter system on its way to Pluto, and we saw some spectacular pictures. Now, the science teams have published detailed scientific results, along with new images and movies. The probe's instruments saw clouds form from ammonia welling up from Jupiter's lower atmosphere, and heat-induced lighting strikes in the polar regions, and fresh eruptions on the volcanic moon Io. New Horizons also captured the clearest images ever of the tenuous Jovian ring system, where scientists spotted clumps of debris that may indicate a recent impact inside the rings, or some more exotic phenomenon." I bet Neil DeGrasse Tyson will be on 7 Discovery channel specials talking about these new discoveries inside of the week. Hope he's nicer than he was to poor Pluto :)
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Informative)
Jesus. We've sent, what, 5 probes close enough to get a look at Io, and every one of them saw significant vulcanism? Pretty safe bet then that it's erupting like that constantly, huge lakes of glowing lava and sulfur plumes 200 miles high.
I'll take my chances with Europa.
Re:Oblig (Score:1, Informative)
Re:And as a result of these new findings... (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, many people have called Jupiter a failed star [sciam.com].
Re:Oblig (Score:5, Informative)
In addition, New Horizons spotted the infrared glow from at least 36 Io volcanoes, and measured lava temperatures up to 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit, similar to many terrestrial volcanoes.
Tim.
Re:Oblig (Score:2, Informative)
Re:money well spent (Score:2, Informative)
Most probes don't use the same kind of color capture technique that "house cameras" offer. They use filters. If you want color, you take images under different filters (select a given wavelength to "see" with). This increases the sensativey range. New Horizons is certainly capable of using many filters to produce color images, but it may have had to weigh different factors. For one, NH does not have independent instrument platforms like Voyagers did. Instead, it has to rotate the whole probe body to aim many of its instruments. This was done to cut costs and increase reliability (stuck joints were common in the Voyagers).
Thus, the camera may have had to share time with other instruments, meaning they may have had to sacrafice multi-wavelength imaging. Generally they will very roughly make one in ten images be multi-wavelength as a compromize, or pick a single "best" wavelength most of the time. It just may be that most of the interesting events happened between the multi wavelength images.
When you are the fastest probe ever launched, you risk missing something when you "blink".