Planetary Picture of the Day
Week of October 3, 2022
Dimorphos, Jupiter, Mars and more. How amazing are these?
Monday, October 3, 2022
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI
Full size Image: https://buff.ly/3rJku3z
The Day the Earth Smiled
On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA's Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn's shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings -- and, in the background, our home planet, Earth.
Tuesday, October 4, 2022
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
Layers in Jezero
Spectacular layered sedimentary deposits at Jezero Crater. Images taken by NASA's Perseverance rover.
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
Credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/A. Cowart, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
The Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud
This martian cloud appears to develop every morning during the spring and summer seasons. Although the atmosphere of Mars is very thin, it still contains enough moisture for this to happen. The relatively moist air is forced to ascend in updrafts driven by winds on Mars blowing along the mountain slopes, until water ice crystals form in the very low temperatures, and then high-altitude winds blow them into a long streak.
Before dawn, a circular cap of cloud, around 125 km across, emerges over the western flank of the mountain, which then, after sunrise, extends rapidly westwards with the prevailing winds – moving at over 600 km/h.
Eventually this thin tail of cloud reaches almost 1,800 km, wrapped around the planet. By midday the air has warmed enough that the entire stretch of cloud evaporates and disappears.
This image was taken during Mars Express' 18,627th orbit of Mars, September 21, 2018. It combines images taken through the HRSC camera's IR, green and blue filters to produce a natural color image.
Thursday, October 6, 2022
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Nathalie Cabrol
Jupiter's Jet Stream
High clouds in Jupiter's jet stream are casting shadows on lower clouds down below. Taken with the JunoCam instrument onboard NASA's Juno spacecraft.
Friday, October 7, 2022
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL
Dimorphos
This is the last complete image of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, taken by the DRACO imager on NASA’s DART mission at ~12 kilometers from the asteroid and two seconds before impact. Ecliptic north is toward the bottom of the image. This image is shown as it appears on the DRACO detector and is mirror flipped across the x-axis from reality.
