Friday, July 24, 2009

Hubble pictures Jupiter's 'scar'

Jupiter (NASA/ESA/SSI)

Hubble has drilled its newborn camera on the atmospheric flutter on Jove believed to impact been caused by a comet or asteroid impact.

The telescope utilised the Wide Field Camera 3 fitted on the recent shuttle servicing assignment to getting ultra-sharp visible-light images of the scar.

The dark blot nearby the gas giant's gray pole was detected first by an unskilled inhabitant astronomer.

Some of the world's biggest telescopes impact since taken careful pictures.

Engineers at the US expanse agency, Nasa, broken the post-servicing authorisation of the refurbished astrophysicist to ingest the WFC-3.

"Because we believe this ratio of effect is rare, we are very fortuitous to see it with Hubble," said Amy Simon-Miller of Nasa's physicist Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"Details seen in the astrophysicist analyse exhibit a lumpiness to the detritus plume caused by disorder in Jupiter's atmosphere."

The pictures augur well for Hubble. Its servicing should provide it individual more eld of life.

The WFC-3 will be utilised to take the deepest images of the cosmos yet.

Astronomers cannot be dead trusty Jove was struck by a expanse object, but the grounds seems compelling. One judge of the diameter of the impacting embody suggests it haw impact been hundreds of metres wide.

"This is meet digit warning of what Hubble's new, state-of-the-art camera crapper do, thanks to the [shuttle] astronauts and the whole astrophysicist team," said Ed Weiler, Nasa's honcho scientist. "However, the best is still to come."

It is 15 eld since Jove was famously impact by Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. It broke up into individual pieces as it plunged on to the gas giant. There was prior warning of that circumstance and astrophysicist took whatever typically important pictures on that occasion, too.
Suchmaschine

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