MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109. TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Contact: Guy Webster, JPL, (818) 354-6278

IMAGE ADVISORYJanuary 23, 2001

NEW FROM CASSINI: JUPITER LIGHTNING STORMS, SMALL MOON

       A new batch of Jupiter images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft demonstrates some of the ways scientists are using Cassini's camera to learn more than what first meets the eye, such as determining particle sizes in clouds and identifying which storms produce lightning. One new picture is the best yet taken of the small moon Himalia, and is the first ever to show one of Jupiter's outer moons as more than a star-like dot.

       One pair of frames shows the same portion of the planet both in daylight then after it had rotated to the night side, showing that only certain small areas were producing lightning.

       The images are available from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/jupiter

and from the Cassini Imaging Science team at the University of Arizona, Tucson, at

http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/ .

       Cassini made its closest pass to Jupiter on Dec. 30, 2000, gaining a gravitational boost for reaching its main destination, Saturn, in 2004. It will continue to make observations and measurements of the Jupiter system through March 2001. More information about joint studies of Jupiter by Cassini and NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which has been orbiting Jupiter for more than five years, is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby .

       Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini and Galileo missions for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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