Turbulence Furrows Jupiter's Brow

Turbulence Furrows Jupiter's Brow

December 5, 2000

Contact:


Guy Webster, JPL, (818) 354-6278


Lori Stiles, University of Arizona, (520) 626-4402

Jupiter's Great Red Spot resembles a eye watching the
moon Ganymede from under a furrowed eyebrow in one new picture
taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The "eye" is really a
giant storm and the "eyebrow" a region of clouds shaped by the
turbulence of winds diverted around the storm.

A set of other new Jupiter images from Cassini shows a
rising storm that penetrates through multiple layers of the
planet's atmosphere.

The images are available from NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., at

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/jupiter

and from the web site of the Cassini Imaging Science team at
the University of Arizona, Tucson, at

http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/.

Cassini will pass most closely to Jupiter, at a flyby
distance of about 10 million kilometers (6 million miles), on
Dec. 30. It will use a boost from Jupiter's gravity to reach
its ultimate destination, Saturn. While near Jupiter, it is
studying that planet's atmosphere, magnetic field and rings in
collaboration with NASA's Galileo spacecraft, which has been
orbiting Jupiter since Dec. 7, 1995. More information on the
joint Cassini-Galileo observations is available at:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby.

Additional information about Cassini is available online at:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini and Galileo missions for
NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is a division of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Media Relations Office

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

California Institute of Technology

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Pasadena, Calif. 91109.

Telephone (818) 354-5011