Startling pictures from Jupiter 'fly-by'

Nasa has released unprecedented images of Jupiter and its moons, taken by mankind's fastest spacecraft on its way to Pluto.

The New Horizons probe used the gravitational pull of Jupiter to slingshot its way towards its smaller cousin, which it is expected to reach in July 2015.

On its way past, the spacecraft, which is the size of a piano and moving at 50,000 miles an hour, came within 1.4 million miles of Jupiter on February 28, allowing it to take pictures of the planet's moons, rings and the permanent storms that rage in its atmosphere.

The craft took nearly 700 pictures, of which 70 per cent have now being radioed back to Nasa across the intervening 600 million miles of space.

"Aside from setting up our 2015 arrival at Pluto the Jupiter flyby was a stress test of our spacecraft and team and both passed with very high marks," said Alan Stern, the mission's principal investigator.

"We'll be analyzing this data for months to come; we have collected spectacular scientific products as well as evocative images."

Among the most prized images are the best ever pictures of the "Little Red Spot", a storm that is younger and smaller but equally violent as "The Great Red Spot", a great spiral of Jovian winds whose diameter is the same size as Earth.

"This is our best look ever of a storm like this in its infancy," said Hal Weaver, a New Horizons project scientist who helped build the spacecraft.

"Combined with data from telescopes on and around Earth taken at the same time New Horizons sped past Jupiter, we're getting an incredible look at the dynamics of weather on giant planets."

The spacecraft, launched 13 months ago at Cape Canaveral, also managed to capture images of a volcanic eruption on Io, one of Jupiter's four moons. The plume from the eruption reached 200 miles into space.

The craft also sent back evidence of an apparently recent impact into one of the planet's rings.

Source :http://www.timesonline.co.uk