Just In Time for Halloween: Jupiter Gets a Giant Cyclops Eye!

Monday, November 3, 2014

Just In Time for Halloween: Jupiter Gets a Giant Cyclops Eye!

Just In Time for Halloween: Jupiter Gets a Giant Cyclops Eye!:

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and Ganymede’s Shadow. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center)

Halloween is just around the corner. And in what appears to be an act of cosmic convergence, Hubble captured a spooky image of Jupiter staring back at us with a cyclops eye!

While this is merely a convenient illusion caused by the passage of Ganymede in front of Jupiter – something it does on a regular basis – the timing and appearance are perfect.

The above image, however, was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on April 21st, 2014, when kids were perhaps thinking of the Easter Bunny, not monsters and goblins. At the time, Hubble was being used to monitor changes in Jupiter’s immense Great Red Spot (GRS) storm.

During the exposures, the shadow of the Jovian moon Ganymede swept across the center of the GRS, giving the giant planet the uncanny appearance of having a pupil in the center of its 16,000 km-diameter (10,000-mile) “eye.”

The conjunction was so perfect, scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center claimed that “For a moment, Jupiter ‘stared’ back at Hubble like a one-eyed giant Cyclops.”

Thermal images of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Image credit: NASA/JPL/ESO and NASA/ESA/GSFC

First observed by Italian astronomer Gian Domenico Cassini in 1665, the GRS is a massive anticyclonic storm that lies 22° south of Jupiter’s equator and is believed to have a lifetime of 300 to 400 years.

The storm has apparently been shrinking over the past few decades – to the point that astronomers believe that it could become circular by the year 2040 and even disappear altogether someday.

Nevertheless, its existence continues to fascinate and inspire. And as the above image demonstrates, it can still catch us by surprise!

The above image was one of several natural-color pictures taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3.

Further Reading: HubbleSite

About Matt Williams

Author, freelance writer, educator, Taekwon-Do instructor, and loving hubby, son and Island boy!

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Monday, November 3, 2014