Jovian
Lightning and Moonlit Clouds
These
two images were taken 75 minutes apart and show lightning storms
on the night-side of Jupiter along with clouds that are dimly
lit by moonlight from lo, Jupiter's closest moon. Bright storms
can be seen at two latitudes in the left image, and at three latitudes
in the right image. Each storm was made visible by multiple lightning
strikes during the exposure. The images show that jovian and terrestrial
lightning storms have similar flash rates, but that jovian lightning
strikes are several factors of ten brighter that those on the
Earth. The images were taken on October 5th and 6th, 1997, at
a range of 6.6 million kilometers (4.1 million miles) by the Solid
State Imaging System on NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
