Europa helps astronomers penetrate Jupiter's lost belt
Thursday, February 10, 2011 - 10:30
in Astronomy & Space
(PhysOrg.com) -- The ongoing turmoil inside Jupiters missing and slowly re-emerging South Equatorial Belt can now be seen in unprecedented detail thanks to the Keck II telescopes Adaptive Optics system and the cooperation of the icy Jovian moon Europa. In this newly released Keck image, the gas giant is shown as it looks in thermal infrared (IR) light, at a wavelength of nearly 5 microns (shown in bright red and yellow), overlaid on a composite image of three shorter, near infrared bands (1.21, 1.58 and 1.65 microns).