Hubble Photographs Jupiter's New "Scar" 60
BearRanger writes "Calibration of new systems in the Hubble Space Telescope (installed in May by Shuttle Atlantis astronauts) were interrupted to take pictures of the new 'scar' near the south pole of Jupiter. The scar is believed to have been caused by the impact of an asteroid or small comet with the gas giant, which we discussed last Sunday. Hubble's return to service will be delayed by this interruption, but NASA says that rare events such as this warrant the delay. This is only the second recorded impact of an object with Jupiter."
Re:Still justifying its existence (Score:5, Insightful)
The resolution of the full size image of Hubble is incredible.
I have always been a fan of the Hubble site and still remain today.
I was heart broken, as well as many others, a few years back when bush wanted to scrap Hubble.
I hope we learned from that near mistake and keep the thing going for years to come.
It will only continue to provide new discoveries with each passing year.
A very valuable asset to science.
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I don't ever remember hearing Bush claimed to have wanted to scrap Hubble. Perhaps you could point to proof of this? Now NASA did want to scrap it because of diverting funding to other projects and the reletive safety concerns involved with a mission to repair it's orbit and a few other things. But that was NASA and not Bush.
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This was discussed here quite a bit back when it was going on. Perhaps I erroneously pointed my middle finger at bush holding him directly accountable for such a retarded idea. But considering bush controlled what funds NASA got, and for some stupid reason they decided to scrap one of the most important scientific devices of all time.
Even though a NASA administrator caught the bulk of flack from the community over the idea of scrapping Hubble, you know as well as I that the
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Wow, even in admitting you were wrong, you have to find a way to "Blame Bush".
Fact of the matter is that Hubble was funded and NASA execs made the decision to use the funding in other ways. That was stopped probably by people closer to Bush more then anything. All this pointing to Bush for everything you don't agree with or don't like isn't healthy when you are basically making shit up to do so. You need to get over him and get over yourself.
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Cult Watch (Score:3, Interesting)
After Art Bell hyped the Hale-Bopp as spaceship with Major Ed Dames, the Heaven's Gate cult [wikipedia.org] offed themselves, thinking they were going home to their reward. I bet Dames and fellow snake oil salesman, Richard C. Hoagland [wikipedia.org] are spinning this one for some sort of prophecy. Watch Hoagland tie his 19.5 Cosmic Math and Masonic rituals into it.
If you are in a cult, now is the time to turn down the bowl of apple sauce and free pairs of Nike.
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The proper question would have been whether the resolution was high enough to make out whether the dark blob is make up from little obelisks that multiply.
Re:Dave what are you doing..... (Score:4, Funny)
Hubble seems really upgraded (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a pretty great image. I don't remember shots of jupiter looking anywhere near this good before. I really can't wait to see what the new hubble is capable of producing.
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This is nothing compared to the shots from the Galileo spacecraft. We would be getting awesome shots of this impact if NASA hadn't suicided the probe in 2003.
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Galileo was EOL'ing anyway. But perhaps the New Horizons probe could be re-oriented? Not sure if that would give any useful additional data, however.
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As for the new Hubble camera - awesome! Now all we need to do is build a new Hubble (sorry, Webb, but your wavelengths are a little too limited) that can be serviced robotically so it no longer has to rely on shuttle missions for fixes and upgrades. Or maybe we can just launch a whole bunch of smaller, cheaper ones, that together act as a much larger t
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Re:Hubble seems really upgraded (Score:5, Informative)
We may not have been able to see anything. Probes like Galileo have thrusters to move themselves about while in orbit. These thrusters use fuel. Galileo was launched in 1989, and swung by Venus, Earth (twice) and a couple of asteroids, using fuel for course corrections for each flyby. In 1995 it had to perform various orbital insertion burns to enter Jupiter's orbit, again using fuel. Galileo then changed orbit several times to visit the various moons of Jupiter, each thrust burning off more fuel. This lasted until 2003, when the propellant tanks were dry. There was just enough fuel to ditch the craft into Jupiter (so it wouldn't accidentally crash into Europa, and contaminate possible life there).
So had it been left in orbit, with no manoeuvring fuel left with which to make course corrections or even re-orient the craft itself, it might possibly have survived the radiation and magnetic fields, the dozens of moons and moonlets, and the strong gravitational pull of Big J. But even if it survived to this day, without fuel, there is no attitude correction. It probably would have been pointing in the wrong direction.
Future probes (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, if America was not hurting financially as bad
Re:Hubble seems really upgraded (Score:4, Insightful)
Have they detailed the calibration milestones?
Re:Hubble seems really upgraded (Score:4, Informative)
looks like chromatic aberration to me. it is an optical problem and can be controlled with software, but pretty common on anything with any kind of optical magnification.
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How about time-lag between the R,G,B components? The Wide Field Camera 3 takes grayscale pictures with different filters. These are combined on Earth to create a color picture. The grayscale pictures for each R,G,B component aren't taken at the exact same time.
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It is a problem with the optical components. Specifically the mirror and the lenses they are using to focus on their intended image. Compare to, say a canon powershot sx10 superzoom which exhibits the same optical qualities. Aberration is a long standing challenge in lens design.
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Light does not bounce off a mirror differently based on its color.
Not normally, no. But that's the diffraction I'm describing; light of certain wavelengths bouncing at unequal angles of incidence and reflection where a mirror is grated - ie, light bouncing off a mirror differently based on its color
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Could also be an artifact of whatever colour correction that they used on the image before public release. The stuff that gets released like this is never the same as the raw colour/image data that is actually used in research or study.
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The hi-res image shows a strong purple colour and a vivid blue bit on the top edge of the blackness. Is this real?
THE BLIGHT IS APPROACHING!
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I think that it's not just the image quality that's interesting. As a non-astro-anything-ist, I tend to think of space exploration as a really slow process, requiring years and years of bureaucratic approvals, budget overruns, then waiting months or years for the thing to get where it's going.
For Hubble to simply stop everything to swing a look at Jupiter so soon after something newsworthy happens there is a reminder that the Hubble Space Telescope is really.fucking.cool.
- RG>
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I've seen this before somewhere.... (Score:1, Funny)
We really need to watch that scar ...see if it starts to grow.
We may want to start thinking of visiting Europa while we can.
Just putting that out there.
Good for NASA (Score:1, Offtopic)
Star Wars anyone? (Score:5, Funny)
"The new camera, installed by the astronauts aboard space shuttle Atlantis in May, is not yet fully calibrated. While it is possible to obtain celestial images, the camera's full power has yet to be seen."
I don't know, but I am just imagining the same words being uttered on the Death Star, albeit in a slightly different context.
Size (Score:4, Interesting)
Has there been any mention of the size of that scar? I know the red spot can hold 2-3 earths but what size is that scar?
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Original reports said it was the size of the pacific ocean. I am guessing that the size is changing pretty constantly, though.
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Now there's a reason to keep watch on asteroids, and to start coming up with ways of deflecting them, if there ever was one.
If something like that hits our planet, things are going to be very unpleasant.
Re:Size (Score:4, Funny)
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And when the asteroid comes at us while Jupiter is nowhere near, how are you going to drag Jupiter into the right position for it to intercept it?
In the solar system, planets rotate around the Sun. It's not a given that Jupiter will always be in the right place at the right time to intercept something. It certainly didn't take care of the dinosaur killing one.
Jupiter is always in the right place (Score:5, Informative)
Jupiter's gravity well is far bigger in influence than all the other planets combined. Jupiter contains 72% of the total mass orbiting the Sun. Small objects are influenced profoundly by Jupiter's gravity no matter where it is in its orbit.
As an example of its magnitude...Jupiter's barycenter of mass with the Sun actually lies at 1.020 Solar radii... not physically within the Sun itself.
Re:Size (Score:5, Informative)
"Wide field" is a relative term... (Score:3, Insightful)
The "wide field" (low-magnification) camera on Hubble gives a much narrower field and higher magnification than a sizable (10") amateur scope at its highest power.
Hubble really, really rocks.
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Generally "wide field" when used to describe a telescope or a camera attached to a telescope doesn't mean "wide-field as opposed to the other, narrow-field camera." Rather, it means "hey look, we managed to make this camera/telescope provide a relatively wide field!"
Ominous... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Maybe the scar is the aliens.
"Hey, Flrknorpt! I bet I can buzz that big planet closer than you!"
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So Flrknorpt is still out there.
why is it black? (Score:1)
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Monoliths (Score:2, Interesting)
"only the second recorded impact" (Score:2)
Or, put another way, "this is the second time in 15 years that amateur astronomers have discovered an object colliding with a planet - collisions which, if they had occurred here, would have sterilised if not utterly destroyed the Earth".
Cometary Swarm (Score:2)
Possible Conjecture on my part: :-)
1) For over 100 years Jupiter has been observed with fairly good equipment and we have not see such large changes such as these impacts.
2) It is possible we are in the middle of a Comet Swarm. The frequency of these sorts of large impacts seems to be out of the ordinary, considering the last one was in 1992. (Shoemaker-Levy)
3) What is caused by this? Could it be the alignment of our Solar System with respect to the Galactic plane:
http://www.optcorp.com/edu/articleDetail [optcorp.com]