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"True" Color Mosaic of Jupiter's Belt-Zone Boundary

Dec. 18, 1997
Pseudo-true color mosaic of a belt-zone boundary near Jupiter's equator. The images that make up the four quadrants of this mosaic were taken within a few minutes of each other by NASA's Galileo orbiter.

Pseudo-true color mosaic of a belt-zone boundary near Jupiter's equator. The images that make up the four quadrants of this mosaic were taken within a few minutes of each other. Galileo observes Jupiter's atmosphere in violet and near-infrared light because these wavelengths give information about composition and altitude. While these wavelengths do not allow a true-color image to be constructed (one would need red, green and blue), a pseudo-true color image can be made. Violet light (415 nanometers) is displayed in blue and near-infrared light (757 nanometers) is displayed in red. A combination of violet and near-infrared light is displayed in green. There is unique information in color images because they simultaneously show how regions of the atmosphere interact with several different wavelengths of light. Clouds that appear white reflect light equally at the different wavelengths. Concentrations of certain chemicals or types of cloud particles give a reddish tint to other areas.

North is at the top. The mosaic covers latitudes -13 to +3 degrees and is centered at longitude 282 degrees West. The smallest resolved features are tens of kilometers in size. These images were taken on November 5th, 1996, at a range of 1.2 million kilometers by the Solid State Imaging system aboard NASA's Galileo spacecraft.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the Galileo mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.

This image and other images and data received from Galileo are posted on the World Wide Web Galileo mission home page at http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov. Background information and educational context for the images can be found at http:// www.jpl.nasa.gov/galileo/sepo.

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