PIA12146: GRACE Global Gravity Animation
 Target Name:  Earth
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  GRACE
 Spacecraft:  GRACE Satellite
 Instrument:  K-Band Ranging System 
 Product Size:  455 x 455 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  University of Texas Center for Space Research
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA12146.tif (209 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA12146.jpg (35.98 kB)

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Original Caption Released with Image:

This visualization of a gravity model was created with data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and shows variations in Earth's gravity field.

Gravity is determined by mass. Earth's mass is not distributed equally, and it also changes over time.

The colors in this image represent the gravity anomalies measured by GRACE. One can define standard gravity as the value of gravity for a perfectly smooth 'idealized' Earth, and the gravity 'anomaly' is a measure of how actual gravity deviates from this standard. Red shows the areas where gravity is stronger than the smooth, standard value, and blue reveals areas where gravity is weaker.

GRACE is a collaborative endeavor involving the Center for Space Research at the University of Texas, Austin; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; the German Space Agency and the German Research Center for Geosciences, Potsdam.

More information on the GRACE mission is online at http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace/ and http://grace.jpl.nasa.gov/.

Originally Released July 2003.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/University of Texas Center for Space Research

Image Addition Date:
2009-07-17