By 5:00 p.m. the excitement had died down; many of the scientists had parties to attend that evening, and some members of the press were planning parties of their own. The schedule of spacecraft activities also seemed to have slowed. There were dark-side observations planned to search for lightning and aurorae. There would be a few more ring pictures—not too much to see on the monitors that night ... or so many people thought. But a few people were waiting around, perhaps to catch a glimpse of lightning or auroral activity, or to wait for another look at Jupiter’s faint ring. Between 5:52 and 6:16 p.m., six long-exposure, wide-angle photographs of the dark side of Jupiter had been scheduled to search for aurorae and lightning. The spacecraft was 1 450 000 kilometers from Jupiter and about two degrees below the equatorial plane. Shortly after 6 p.m., the first of these ring photographs appeared on the TV monitors with unexpected brilliance. Taken in orange and violet light, the images showed the outline of Jupiter and, protruding from it, two narrow lines—one reaching all the way to Jupiter’s limb, the other broken off, apparently hidden by the shadow of the giant planet. Seen from the new perspective of the shadow of Jupiter, the tenuous rings were remarkably clear. A sudden renewal of excitement surged through the devotees remaining in the press room. About 6:15, Brad Smith came down to join the press to watch the remainder of this series of pictures come in. “Hey Brad, are you going to burn out the camera with the ring?” someone joked. “Well, the rings do forward scatter nicely, don’t they?” Dr. Smith replied. As the wide-angle pictures were followed by narrow-angle views, more and more detail became apparent. For the first time, a definite width for the ring could be seen, and there was even a hint of additional material inside the main ring. All in all, Voyager had provided one more splendid series of pictures before it took off for Saturn. [Illustration: From a vantage point 2.5 degrees above the ring plane, Voyager 2 was able for the first time to determine the width of Jupiter’s ring. This picture shows that the ring is ribbon-like and only a few thousand kilometers wide, quite unlike the broad rings of Saturn. [P-21757B/W]] Wednesday, July 11. JPL Public Information Officer Frank Bristow opened the 10 a.m. press conference with an announcement: “We’ll have the report from the Imaging Team including the tremendous pictures that we received here last night of the Jupiter ring that excited the entire team.”