New movies of Jupiter are the first to catch an invisible wave shaking up one of the giant planet’s jet streams, an interaction that also takes place in Earth’s atmosphere and influences the weather. The movies, made from images taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft when it flew by Jupiter in 2000, are part of an in-depth study conducted by a …

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Jupiter’s swirling clouds can be seen through any department store telescope. With no more effort than it takes to bend over an eyepiece, you can witness storm systems bigger than Earth navigating ruddy belts that stretch hundreds of thousands of kilometers around Jupiter’s vast equator. It’s fascinating.

It’s also vexing. According to many researchers, the really interesting things–from the roots …

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NASA’s solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:25 a.m. PDT (12:25 p.m. EDT) Friday to begin a five-year journey to Jupiter.


NASA’s Juno mission lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Juno’s detailed study of the largest planet in our solar system will help reveal Jupiter’s origin and evolution. …

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Earlier this month, ESA’s Mars Express performed a special manoeuvre to observe an unusual alignment of Jupiter and the martian moon Phobos. The impressive images have now been processed into a movie of this rare event.

At the moment when Mars Express, Phobos, and Jupiter aligned on 1 June 2011, there was a distance of 11 389 km between the …

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New data analysis from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft reveals a subsurface ocean of molten or partially molten magma beneath the surface of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io.

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Detailed observations made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found an answer to the flash of light seen June 3 on Jupiter. It came from a giant meteor burning up high above Jupiter’s cloud tops. The space visitor did not plunge deep enough into the atmosphere to explode and leave behind any telltale cloud of debris, as seen in previous …

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So you thought Northern Lights were big in Alaska? “That’s nothing,” says Randy Gladstone of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. “Jupiter has auroras bigger than our entire planet.”

Last month, Gladstone and colleagues used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to capture the picture above.

The purple ring traces Jupiter’s X-ray auroras. Gladstone calls them “Northern Lights on steroids. …

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Jupiter Moon Movie

Four hundred years ago when Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, the satellites appeared in his primitive telescope as tiny, almost infinitesimal specks of light pirouetting around the giant planet. Their discovery transformed 17th century cosmology and made Galileo famous, but he never saw them as anything more than star-like pinpricks. The “Galilean satellites” were second-class citizens in the heirarchy …

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Amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley from Canberra, Australia captured an image of Jupiter on July 19, 2009 showing a possible new impact site. Anthony’s image shows a new dark spot in the South Polar Region of Jupiter, at approximately 216° longitude in System 2. It looks very similar to the impact marks made on Jupiter when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into …

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Today NASA released stunning new images of Jupiter and its moons taken by the New Horizons spacecraft. Views include a movie of a volcanic eruption on Jupiter’s moon Io; a nighttime shot of auroras and lava on Io; a color photo of the “Little Red Spot” churning in Jupiter’s cloudtops; images of small moons herding dust and boulders through Jupiter’s …

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