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ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
Galileo
From its orbit around Jupiter, Galileo was able to study the Jovian atmosphere over a long period of time, learning how escaping heat from the interior drives the churning storms and other weather on Jupiter. When comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smashed into Jupiter in 1994, Galileo was there to observe the fragments striking the planet on the side opposite the sun--a view inaccessible to the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes. Galileo's images improved scientists' understanding of such impacts into planetary atmospheres.
These 12 images of Jupiter and the luminous night-side impact of fragment W of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 were taken by the Galileo spacecraft on July 22, 1994. Reading from left to right in each row from the top, they present a 30-second history of the initial phase of the impact event.
Galileo was the first to send a probe to explore the depths of Jupiter's atmosphere. Its journey lasted 58 minutes, taking it 124 miles (200 kilometers) deep into the atmosphere before the rising temperature and pressure crushed, melted--and finally vaporized--the probe.
But in its brief life, the probe measured the temperature, pressure, chemical composition, cloud features, lightning, the amount of sunlight, and the planet's internal heat and energy. It found that the atmosphere contained a similar amount of helium as the sun and less neon. But there were more of some heavier elements, such as argon, krypton, xenon, and carbon.
Most curiously, the probe found much less water than scientists had expected. The probe might just have happened to drop in a particularly dry spot in the atmosphere, although no one knows for sure. Indeed, one of Juno's goals is to solve this mystery of the missing water. copy goes here
But in its brief life, the probe measured the temperature, pressure, chemical composition, cloud features, lightning, the amount of sunlight, and the planet's internal heat and energy. It found that the atmosphere contained a similar amount of helium as the sun and less neon. But there were more of some heavier elements, such as argon, krypton, xenon, and carbon.
Most curiously, the probe found much less water than scientists had expected. The probe might just have happened to drop in a particularly dry spot in the atmosphere, although no one knows for sure. Indeed, one of Juno's goals is to solve this mystery of the missing water. copy goes here