Features:
- The image is a collage
of the
Galilean moons
of Jupiter
(i.e., the most prominent part of
Jovian system)
and a bit of Jupiter itself.
It includes the limb of
Jupiter with its
Great Red Spot
and Jupiter's
4 largest
moons, the aforesaid
the Galilean moons.
The Galilean moons
from top to bottom in the image (with diameter
in kilometers and
moon size order
among the moons
of the Solar System) are
Io (3643 km,
4th),
Europa (3122 km,
6th),
Ganymede (5268 km,
1st),
and
Callisto (4821 km,
3rd).
- North is at the top of the image.
- Jupiter
and the Galilean moons
are all to-scale
with scale factor
15
kilometers
(9
miles) per
pixel.
- "Note that
Europa, the smallest of the
Galilean moons,
is slightly smaller than the Earth's
Moon
and Ganymede
is the largest moon
in the Solar System."
(PIA00600: somewhat edited.)
- "The Great Red Spot,
a storm
in Jupiter's atmosphere,
is perhaps ∼ 300
years old
(see
Wikipedia: Great Red Spot:
Observational history).
Winds blow
counterclockwise
around the Great Red Spot at
∼ 400 kilometers per
hour
(250 miles per
hour).
The storm
is larger than 1
Earth diameter
(equatorial value 12,756.2740 km)
from north to
south, and more than
2
Earth diameters
from east and
west.
In this oblique view, the Great Red Spot
appears longer in the
north-south
direction."
(PIA00600: somewhat edited.)
- "The CCD camera
aboard NASA's
Galileo spacecraft
(1989--1995-arrival--2003)
obtained the Jupiter,
Io,
and Ganymede
images in
1996 June,
while the Europa
images
were obtained in 1996 September.
Because the Galileo spacecraft
focused on high-resolution imaging
of regional areas on Callisto
rather than global coverage, we use an image of
Callisto
from the 1979 March
flyby of
NASA's
Voyager 1 spacecraft."
(PIA00600: somewhat edited.)
- "Launched
1989
Oct18,
the Galileo spacecraft's
mission was to conduct detailed studies of the
Jupiter,
the largest Jovian moons,
and the Jovian magnetosphere.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
Pasadena, California,
managed the mission for
NASA's
Office of Space Science,
"Washington, DC."
(PIA00600: somewhat edited.)
- "This image and other
images and
data received from
the Galileo spacecraft
are posted on the World Wide Web,
on the Galileo mission home page."
(PIA00600: somewhat edited.)