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PIA09231: Jupiter Ahoy!
Jupiter Ahoy!
 Target Name:  Jupiter
 Is a satellite of:  Sol (our sun)
 Mission:  New Horizons 
 Spacecraft:  New Horizons
 Instrument:  LORRI 
 Product Size:  256 x 256 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  Johns Hopkins University/APL 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA09231.tif (65.83 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA09231.jpg (2.067 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

Click here for annotated version of New Horizons Tracks an Asteroid
Annotated Version

The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on NASA's New Horizons spacecraft took this photo of Jupiter on Sept. 4, 2006, from a distance of 291 million kilometers (nearly 181 million miles) away.

Visible in the image are belts, zones and large storms in Jupiter's atmosphere, as well as the Jovian moons Europa (at left) and Io and the shadows they cast on Jupiter.

LORRI snapped this image during a test sequence to help prepare for the Jupiter encounter observations. It was taken close to solar opposition, meaning that the Sun was almost directly behind the camera when it spied Jupiter. This makes Jupiter appear about 40 times brighter than Pluto will be for LORRI's primary observations when New Horizons encounters the Pluto system in 2015.

To avoid saturation, the camera's exposure time was kept to 6 milliseconds. This image was, in part, a test to see how well LORRI would operate with such a short exposure time.

Image Credit:
NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Image Addition Date:
2007-04-02