Jupiter (Planet) -- Photographs from space; Jupiter probes; Voyager Project
[Illustration: The Great Red Spot and the white oval south of it are
seen to be followed on the west by regions of chaotic and turbulent
clouds. This is not the same white oval that was near the Red Spot
in March; the differential rotation of the planet carried a
different oval close to the Red Spot during the intervening three
months. [P-21713C]]
[Illustration: Io is visible to the right of the planet, and the
shadow of Ganymede falls on the colored clouds of Jupiter’s
equatorial belt. [P-21714C]]
[Illustration: The Voyager 2 trajectory was complementary to that of
Voyager 1. This time, the satellites were encountered before
Jupiter, revealing their other hemispheres. As shown in this
drawing, the spacecraft flew by first Callisto, then Ganymede, then
Europa. The ten-hour Io volcano watch took place immediately after
closest approach to Jupiter. [260-533A]]
Voyager 2 trajectory
View normal to Jupiter equator
Sun occultation
Earth occultation
Launch date = 8/20/77
Jupiter arrival date = 7/9/79
Periapsis
Satellite closest approach
Amalthea
Europa
Io
Ganymede
Callisto
[Illustration: These two faces of Jupiter were photographed by
Voyager 2 on May 9 at a distance of 46 million kilometers from the
planet. Voyager scientists began to detect significant changes in
the cloud patterns since the Voyager 1 encounter two months earlier.
[260-507]]
[Illustration: Jupiter.]
[Illustration: Jupiter.]
[Illustration: The weather is changing over one of the northern
hemisphere brown ovals in this picture taken July 6. The brown ovals
are regions in which breaks in the upper layer of ammonia clouds
reveal darker clouds below. A high, white cloud is seen moving over
the darker cloud, providing an indication of the structure of the
cloud layers. Thin white clouds are also seen within the dark cloud.
At right, blue areas, free of high clouds, are seen. [P-21753C]]
Although Voyager 2’s radio receiver still could not track a
Doppler-shifted radio signal from Earth (the problem is that it “hears a
monotone,” explained Deputy Project Manager Esker K. Davis), the Deep
Space Network engineers had learned to work with the spacecraft,
determining what frequency the spacecraft would listen to at any
particular time. They had discovered that some of the “housekeeping”
telemetry signals from the receiver were sensitive to the match between
the incoming frequency and the receiver frequency. By monitoring these
signals, they could detect a frequency drift in time to correct the
transmission, thus keeping the system in tune in spite of slow changes
in the receiver. The system was slow and demanding but effective; all
the necessary command sequences were successfully loaded into the
computer, and communications during the encounter were entirely
successful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account