朱诺号影像: 木卫三

朱诺号影像: 木卫三

2023年11月28日 Ganymede from Juno Image Credit & Copyright: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS; Processing & License: Kevin M. Gill; Explanation: What does the largest moon in the Solar System look like? Jupiter‘s moon Ganymede, larger than even Mercury and Pluto, has an icy surface speckled with bright young craters overlying a mixture of older, darker, more cratered terrain laced with grooves and ridges. The cause of the grooved terrain remains a topic of research, with a leading hypothesis relating it to shifting ice plates. Ganymede is thought to have an ocean layer that contains more water than Earth — and might contain life. Like Earth’s Moon, Ganymede keeps the same face towards its central planet, in this case Jupiter. The featured image was captured in 2021 by NASA’s robotic…

冲点附近的立体木星

冲点附近的立体木星

2023年11月24日 Stereo Jupiter near Opposition Image Credit & Copyright: Marco Lorenzi Explanation: Jupiter looks sharp in these two rooftop telescope images. Both were captured on November 17 from Singapore, planet Earth, about two weeks after Jupiter’s 2023 opposition. Climbing high in midnight skies the giant planet was a mere 33.4 light-minutes from Singapore. That’s about 4 astronomical units away. Jupiter’s planet girdling dark belts and light zones are visible in remarkable detail, along with the giant world’s whitish oval vortices. Its signature Great Red Spot is still prominent in the south. Jupiter rotates rapidly on its axis once every 10 hours. So, based on video frames taken only 15 minutes apart, these images form a stereo pair. Look at the center of the pair and…

三行星伴石峰

三行星伴石峰

2023年11月14日 Three Planets Rock Image Credit & Copyright: Giovanni Passalacqua; Text: Liz Coelho (Pikes Peak) Explanation: In the fading darkness before dawn, a tilted triangle appeared to balance atop a rock formation off the southern tip of Sicily. Making up the points of the triangle are three of the four brightest objects visible in Earth’s sky: Jupiter, Venus and the Moon. Though a thin waning crescent, most of the moon’s disk is visible due to earthshine. Captured in this image on 2022 April 27, Venus (center) and Jupiter (left) are roughly three degrees apart — and were headed toward a close conjunction. Conjunctions of Venus and Jupiter occur about once a year and are visible either in the east before sunrise or in the west…

月光下的木星

月光下的木星

2023年11月3日 Jupiter by Moonlight Image Credit & Copyright: Giorgia Hofer Explanation: That bright beacon you’ve seen rising in the east just after sunset is Jupiter. Climbing high in midnight skies, our Solar System’s ruling gas giant was at its 2023 opposition, opposite the Sun in planet Earth’s sky, on November 2. But only a few days earlier, on October 28, the Moon was at its own opposition. Then both Full Moon and Jupiter could share this telephoto field of view. The celestial scene is composed from two exposures, one long and one short, blended to record bright planet and even brighter Moon during that evening’s partial lunar eclipse. Moonlight shining through the thin, high clouds over northern Italy creates the colorful iridescence and lunar corona….

朱诺航天器的木卫一影像

朱诺航天器的木卫一影像

2023年10月23日 Moon Io from Spacecraft Juno Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SwRI, MSSS; Processing & Copyright: Ted Stryk & Fernando García Navarro Explanation: There goes another one! Volcanoes on Jupiter‘s moon Io keep erupting. To investigate, NASA‘s robotic Juno spacecraft has begun a series of visits to this very strange moon. Io is about the size of Earth’s moon, but because of gravitational flexing by Jupiter and other moons, Io’s interior gets heated and its surface has become covered with volcanoes. The featured image is from last week’s flyby, passing within 12,000 kilometers above the dangerously active world. The surface of Io is covered with sulfur and frozen sulfur dioxide, making it appear yellow, orange and brown. As hoped, Juno flew by just as a volcano…

月亮与木星

月亮与木星

2023年8月8日 Moon Meets Jupiter Credit & Copyright: Jordi L. Coy Explanation: What’s that below the Moon? Jupiter — and its largest moons. Many skygazers across planet Earth enjoyed the close conjunction of Earth’s Moon passing nearly in front of Jupiter in mid-June. The featured image is a single exposure of the event taken from Morón de la Frontera, Spain. The sunlit lunar crescent on the left is overexposed, while the Moon’s night side, on the right, is only faintly illuminated by Earthshine. Lined up diagonally below the Moon, left to right, are Jupiter’s bright Galilean satellites: Callisto, Ganymede, Io (hard to see as it is very near to Jupiter), and Europa. In fact, Callisto, Ganymede, and Io are larger than Earth’s Moon, while Europa is…