News Release Archive:

News Release 102 of 830

July 24, 2009 03:00 PM (EDT)

News Release Number: STScI-2009-23

Hubble Captures Rare Jupiter Collision

Technical facts about this news release:

About the Object

Object Name:	Jupiter
Object Description:	Planet
Distance:	The semi-major axis of Jupiter's orbit about the sun is 5.2 astronomical units (483 million miles or 778 million km). On July 23, 2009 Jupiter was 381 million miles from Earth.
Dimensions:	The planet has a diameter of roughly 88,789 miles (142,984 km) at the equator.

About the Data

Data Description:	The image was created from Hubble data from proposal 12003: H. Hammel (Space Science Institute), A. Simon-Miller (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), J. Clarke (Boston University), I. de Pater (University of California, Berkeley), K. Noll (STScI), G. Orton (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), A. Sanchez-Lavega (University of the Basque Country, Spain), and M. Wong (STScI).
Instrument:	WFC3/UVIS
Exposure Date(s):	July 23, 2009 19:00 UT
Filters:	F225W (225 nm), F275W (275 nm), FQ378N (378 nm), FQ437N (437 nm), FQ508N (508nm), FQ634N (634 nm), FQ727N (727 nm), FQ889N (889 nm), FQ906N (906 nm), FQ924N (924 nm)

About the Release

Credit:

NASA, ESA, H. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), and the Jupiter Impact Team

Release Date:

July 24, 2009

Color:

The image is a composite of separate exposures made by the WFC3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Three filters were used to sample narrow wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic image. In this case, the assigned colors are:

FQ437N (437 nm)	blue
FQ508N (508nm)	green
FQ634N (634 nm)	red

Orientation/Scale: