JUPITER

by solarviews.com

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and is the largest one in the solar system. If Jupiter were hollow, more than one thousand Earths could fit inside. It also contains more matter than all of the other planets combined. It has a mass of 1.9 x 10²⁷ kg and is 142,800 kilometers (88,736 miles) across the equator. Jupiter possesses 28 known satellites, four of which -- Callisto, Europa, Ganymede and Io [1] were observed by Galileo as long ago as 1610. Another 12 satellites have been recently discovered and given provisional designators until they are officially confirmed and named. There is a ring system, but it is very faint and is totally invisible from the Earth. (The rings were discovered in 1979 by Voyager 1.) The atmosphere is very deep, perhaps comprising the whole planet, and is somewhat like the Sun. It is composed mainly of hydrogen and helium, with small amounts of methane, ammonia, water vapor and other compounds. At great depths within Jupiter, the pressure is so great that the hydrogen atoms are broken up and the electrons are freed so that the resulting atoms consist of bare protons. This produces a state in which the hydrogen becomes metallic.

Colorful latitudinal bands, atmospheric clouds and storms illustrate Jupiter's dynamic weather systems. The cloud patterns change within hours or days. The Great Red Spot is a complex storm moving in a counter-clockwise direction. At the outer edge, material appears to rotate in four to six days; near the center, motions are small and nearly random in direction. An array of other smaller storms and eddies can be found through out the banded clouds.

Auroral missions, similar to Earth's northern lights, were observed in the polar regions of Jupiter. The auroral emissions appear to be related to material from Io that spirals along magnetic field lines to fall into Jupiter's atmosphere. Cloud-top lightning bolts, similar to superbolts in Earth's high atmosphere, were also observed.

Jupiter's Ring

Unlike Saturn's intricate and complex ring patterns, Jupiter has a simple ring system that is composed of an inner halo, a main ring and a Gossamer ring. To the Voyager spacecraft, the Gossamer ring appeared to be a single ring, but Galileo imagery provided the unexpected discovery that Gossamer is really two rings. One ring is embedded within the other. The rings are very tenuous and are composed of dust particles kicked up as interplanetary meteoroids smash into Jupiter's four small inner moons Metis, Adrastea, Thebe and Amalthea.  Many of the particles are microscopic in size.

The innermost halo ring is toroidal in shape and extends radially from about 92,000 kilometers (57,000 miles) to about 122,500 kilometers (76,000 miles) from Jupiter's center. It is formed as fine particles of dust from the main ring's inner boundary 'bloom' outward as they fall toward the planet. The main and brightest ring extends from the halo boundary out to about 128,940 kilometers (80,000 miles) or just inside the orbit of Adrastea. Close to the orbit of Metis, the main ring's brightness decreases.

The two faint Gossamer rings are fairly uniform in nature. The innermost Amalthea Gossamer ring extends from the orbit of Adrastea out to the orbit of Amalthea at 181,000 kilometers (112,000 miles) from Jupiter's center. The fainter Thebe Gossamer ring extends from Amalthea's orbit out to about Thebe's orbit at 221,000 kilometers (136,000 miles).

Jupiter's rings and moons exist within an intense radiation belt of electrons and ions trapped in the planet's magnetic field. These particles and fields comprise the jovian magnetosphere or magnetic environment, which extends 3 to 7 million kilometers (1.9 to 4.3 million miles) toward the Sun, and stretches in a windsock shape at least as far as Saturn's orbit - a distance of 750 million kilometers (466 million miles).

VIEWS OF JUPITER

Jupiter

This image was taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope on February 13, 1995. The image provides a detailed look at a unique cluster of three white oval-shaped storms that lie southwest (below and to the left) of Jupiter's Great Red Spot. The appearance of the clouds, in this image, is considerably different from their appearance only seven months earlier. These features are moving closer together as the Great Red Spot is carried westward by the prevailing winds while the white ovals are swept eastward.

The outer two of the white storms formed in the late 1930s. In the centers of these cloud systems the air is rising, carrying fresh ammonia gas upward. New, white ice crystals form when the upwelling gas freezes as it reaches the chilly cloud top level where temperatures are -130°C (-200°F). The intervening white storm center, the ropy structure to the left of the ovals, and the small brown spot have formed in low pressure cells. The white clouds sit above locations where gas is descending to lower, warmer regions.

The Interior of Jupiter

This picture illustrates the internal structure of Jupiter. The outer layer is primarily composed of molecular hydrogen. At greater depths the hydrogen starts resembling a liquid. At 10,000 kilometers below Jupiter's cloud top liquid hydrogen reaches a pressure of 1,000,000 bar with a temperature of 6,000° K. At this state hydrogen changes into a phase of liquid metallic hydrogen. In this state, the hydrogen atoms break down yeilding ionized protons and electrons similar to the Sun's interior. Below this is a layer dominated by ice where "ice" denotes a soupy liquid mixture of water, methane, and ammonia under high temperatures and pressures. Finally at the center is a rocky or rocky-ice core of up to 10 Earth masses. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)

Thin Crescent Image of Jupiter

This thin crescent picture of Jupiter was created from a photomosaic of images Galileo took on its C9 orbit. It is made from Near Infrared and Violet images, with an artificial green image produced from the other two. (Courtesy of Ted Stryk)

Nordic Optical Telescope

This image of Jupiter was taken with the 2.6 meter Nordic Optical Telescope, located at La Palma, Canary Islands. It is a good example of the best imagery that can be obtained from earth based telescopes. (c) Nordic Optical Telescope Scientific Association (NOTSA).

Jupiter with Satellites Io and Europa

Voyager 1 took this photo of Jupiter and two of its satellites (Io, left, and Europa, right) on Feb. 13, 1979. In this view, Io is about 350,000 kilometers (220,000 miles) above Jupiter's Great Red Spot, while Europa is about 600,000 kilometers (373,000 miles) above Jupiter's clouds. Jupiter is about 20 million kilometers (12.4 million miles) from the spacecraft at the time of this photo. There is evidence of circular motion in Jupiter's atmosphere. While the dominant large scale motions are west-to-east, small scale movement includes eddy like circulation within and between the bands. (Courtesy NASA/JPL)

Satellite Footprints Seen in Jupiter Aurora

In this Hubble Space Telescope picture, a curtain of glowing gas is wrapped around Jupiter's north pole like a lasso. This curtain of light, called an aurora, is produced when high-energy electrons race along the planet's magnetic field and into the upper atmosphere where they excite atmospheric gases, causing them to glow. The aurora resembles the same phenomenon that crowns Earth's polar regions. But this Hubble image, taken in ultraviolet light, also shows the glowing "footprints" of three of Jupiter's largest moons: Io, Ganymede, and Europa.

Courtesy of NASA/ESA, John Clarke (University of Michigan)

Jupiter's Magnetosphere

This image taken by the ion and neutral mass spectrometer instrument on NASA's Cassini spacecraft makes the huge magnetosphere surrounding Jupiter visible in a way no instrument on any previous spacecraft has been able to do. The magnetosphere is a bubble of charged particles trapped within the magnetic environment of the planet. A magnetic field is sketched over the image to place the energetic neutral atom emissions in perspective. This sketch extends in the horizontal plane to a width 30 times the radius of Jupiter. Also shown for scale and location are the disk of Jupiter (black circle) and the approximate position (yellow circles) of the doughnut-shaped torus created from material spewed out by volcanoes on Io.

Some of the fast-moving ions within the magnetosphere pick up electrons to become neutral atoms, and once they become neutral, they can escape Jupiter's magnetic field, flying out from the magnetosphere at speeds of thousands of kilometers, or miles, per second.

Jupiter's Auroras

These HST images, reveal changes in Jupiter's auroral emissions and how small auroral spots just outside the emission rings are linked to the planet's volcanic moon, Io. The top panel pinpoints the effects of emissions from Io. The image on the left, shows how Io and Jupiter are linked by an invisible electrical current of charged particles called a flux tube. The particles, ejected from Io by volcanic eruptions, flow along Jupiter's magnetic field lines, which thread through Io, to the planet's north and south magnetic poles.

The top-right image shows Jupiter's auroral emissions at the north and south poles. Just outside these emissions are the auroral spots called "footprints." The spots are created when the particles in Io's "flux tube" reach Jupiter's upper atmosphere and interact with hydrogen gas, making it fluoresce.

The two ultraviolet images at the bottom of the picture show how the auroral emissions change in brightness and structure as Jupiter rotates. These false-color images also reveal how the magnetic field is offset from Jupiter's spin axis by 10 to 15 degrees. In the right image, the north auroral emission is rising over the left limb; the south auroral oval is beginning to set. The image on the left, obtained on a different date, shows a full view of the north aurora, with a strong emission inside the main auroral oval.

Credits: John T. Clarke and Gilda E. Ballester (University of Michigan), John Trauger and Robin Evans (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and NASA.

The Great Red Spot

This dramatic view of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its surroundings was obtained by Voyager 1 on Feb. 25, 1979, when the spacecraft was 9.2 million kilometers (5.7 million miles) from Jupiter. Cloud details as small as 160 kilometers (100 miles) across can be seen here. The colorful, wavy cloud pattern to the left of the Red Spot is a region of extraordinarily complex and variable wave motion. (Courtesy NASA)

False Color of Jupiter's Great Red Spot

This image is a false color representation of Jupiter's Great Red Spot taken with Galileo's imaging system through three different near-infrared filters. This is a mosaic of eighteen images (6 in each filter) that were taken over a period of 6 minutes on June 26, 1996. The Great Red Spot appears pink and the surrounding region blue because of the particular color coding used in this representation. The red channel is the reflectance of Jupiter at a wavelength where methane strongly absorbs (889nm). Because of this absorption, only high clouds can reflect sunlight in this wavelength. The green channel is the reflectance in a wavelength where methane absorbs, but less strongly (727nm). Lower clouds can reflect sunlight in this wavelength. Finally, the blue channel is the reflectance in a wavelength where there are essentially no absorbers in the Jovian atmosphere (756nm) and one sees light reflected from the deepest clouds. Thus, the color of a cloud in this image indicates its height, with red or white being highest and blue or black being lowest. This image shows the Great Red Spot to be relatively high, as are some smaller clouds to the northeast and northwest that are surprisingly like towering thunderstorms found on earth. The deepest clouds are in the collar surrounding the Great Red Spot, and also just to the northwest of the high (bright) cloud in the northwest corner of the image. Preliminary modelling shows these cloud heights to range about 50km in altitude. (Courtesy NASA/JPL)

Ring of Jupiter

The ring of Jupiter was discovered by Voyager 1 in March of 1979. This image was taken by Voyager 2 and has been pseudo colored. The Jovian ring is about 6,500 kilometers (4,000 miles) wide and probably less than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) thick. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)

The Jovian System

The best of the Jupiter system is pictured in this collage of images acquired by the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system. The four largest moons of Jupiter are known as the Galilean moons and are named Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io. Inside the orbits of the Galilean moons are Thebe, Amalthea, Adrastea, and Metis. At the lower right is shown the Valhalla region of Callisto. Ganymede is toward the bottom middle. Europa is a little above and to the right of Ganymede. Io is the top, left-most moon. Between Io and Jupiter are four little moons. The top-most little moon is Amalthea. Below and to the right of Amalthea are Metis and Adrastea. To the left of Adrastea is Thebe. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)

Moons of Jupiter

This image shows to scale Jupiter's moons Amalthea, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. (Copyright Calvin J. Hamilton)

RINGS OF JUPITER

*The distance is measured from the planet center to the start of the ring.

JUPITER'S MOON SUMMARY

Nearly four centuries ago Galileo Galilei turned his homemade telescope towards the heavens and discovered three points of light, which at first he thought to be stars, hugging the planet Jupiter. These stars were arranged in a straight line with Jupiter. Sparking his interest, Galileo observed the stars and found that they moved the wrong way. Four days later another star appeared. After observing the stars over the next few weeks, Galileo concluded that they were not stars but planetary bodies in orbit around Jupiter. These four stars have come to be know as the Galilean satellites.

Over the course of the following centuries another 12 moons were discovered bringing the total to 16. Another 12 satellites have been recently discovered and given provisional designators until they are officially confirmed and named. Finally in 1979, the strangeness of these frozen new worlds was brought to light by the Voyager spacecrafts as they swept past the Jovian system. Again in 1996, the exploration of these worlds took a large step forward as the Galileo spacecraft began its long term mission of observing Jupiter and its moons.

Twelve of Jupiter's moons are relatively small and seem to have been more likely captured than to have been formed in orbit around Jupiter. The four large Galilean moons,  Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, are believed to have accreted as part of the process by which Jupiter itself formed. The following table summarizes the radius, mass, distance from the planet center, discoverer and the date of discovery of each of the moons of Jupiter:

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American-Buddha Librarian's Comment: For the cult-politico aspects of Jupiter including but not limited to boring Greek mythology see:

[1] Jupiter 1, Fifth Planet, Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, Io, Northern Lights, Polar Regions, Jupiter 2, Amalthea, Barnard Star

From "The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush," by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin http://www.american-buddha.com/unauthor.bio.bush.8b.htm :

A body of leads has been assembled which suggests that George Bush may have been associated with the CIA at some time before the autumn of 1963. According to Joseph McBride of The Nation, "a source with close connections to the intelligence community confirms that Bush started working for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine activities. By the time of the Kennedy assassination, we have an official FBI document which refers to "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency," and despite official disclaimers there is every reason to think that this is indeed the man in the White House today. The mystery of George Bush as a possible covert operator hinges on four points, each one of which represents one of the great political and espionage scandals of postwar American history. These four cardinal points are:

1. The abortive Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, launched on April 16-17, 1961, prepared with the assistance of the CIA's "Miami Station" (also known under the code name JM/WAVE). After the failure of the amphibious landings of Brigade 2506, Miami station, under the leadership of Theodore Shackley, became the focus for Operation Mongoose, a series of covert operations directed against Castro, Cuba, and possibly other targets.

2. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and the coverup of those responsible for this crime.

3. The Watergate scandal, beginning with an April, 1971 visit to Miami, Florida by E. Howard Hunt on the tenth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion to recruit operatives for the White House Special Investigations Unit (the "Plumbers" and later Watergate burglars) from among Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veterans.

4. The Iran-contra affair, which became a public scandal during October-November 1986, several of whose central figures, such as Felix Rodriguez, were also veterans of the Bay of Pigs.

George Bush's role in both Watergate and the October surprise/Iran-contra complex will be treated in detail at later points in this book. Right now it is important to see that thirty years of covert operations, in many respects, form a single continuous whole. This is especially true in regard to the dramatis personae. Georgie Anne Geyer points to the obvious in a recent book: "...an entire new Cuban cadre now emerged from the Bay of Pigs. The names Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker, Rolando Martinez, Felix Rodriguez and Eugenio Martinez would, in the next quarter century, pop up, often decisively, over and over again in the most dangerous American foreign policy crises. There were Cubans flying missions for the CIA in the Congo and even for the Portuguese in Africa; Cubans were the burglars of Watergate; Cubans played key roles in Nicaragua, in Irangate, in the American move into the Persian Gulf." 2 Felix Rodriguez tells us that he was infiltrated into Cuba with the other members of the "Grey Team" in conjunction with the Bay of Pigs landings; this is the same man we will find directing the contra supply effort in central American during the 1980's, working under the direct supervision of Don Gregg and George Bush. 3 Theodore Shackley, the JM/WAVE station chief, will later show up in Bush's 1979-80 presidential campaign.

To a very large degree, such covert operations (and the great political scandals attendant upon them) have drawn upon the same pool of personnel. They are a significant extent the handiwork of the same crowd. It is therefore revealing to extrapolate forward and backward in time the individuals and groups of individuals who appear as the cast of characters in one scandal and compare them with the cast of characters for the other scandals, including the secondary ones that have not been enumerated here. Howard Hunt, for example, shows up as a confirmed part of the overthrow of the Guatemalan government of Jacopo Arbenz in 1954, as an important part of the chain of command in the Bay of Pigs, as a person repeatedly accused of having been in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot, and as one of the central figures of Watergate. (One wonders what secrets, after all, were contained in Howard Hunt's safe, the contents of which were so conveniently "deep sixed" by FBI Director Patrick Gray.)

George Bush is demonstrably one of the most important protagonists of the Watergate scandal, and was the overall director of Iran-contra. Since he appears especially in Iran-contra in close proximity to Bay of Pigs holdovers, it is surely legitimate to wonder when his association with those Bay of Pigs Cubans might have started.

1959 was the year that Bush started operating out of his Zapata Offshore headquarters in Houston; it was also the year that Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba. Officially, as we have seen, George was now a businessman whose work took him at times to Louisiana, where Zapata had offshore drilling operations. George must have been a frequent visitor to New Orleans. Because of his family's estate on Jupiter Island, he would also have been a frequent visitor to the Hobe Sound area. And then, there were Zapata Offshore drilling operations in the Florida Strait. On all of these activities, the official "red Studebaker" biographical material and the Zapata Offshore annual reports are extremely cryptic.

The Jupiter Island connection and father Prescott's Brown Brothers, Harriman/Skull and Bones networks are doubtless the key. Jupiter Island meant Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, C. Douglas Dillon and other Anglophile financiers who had directed the US intelligence community long before there had been a CIA at all. And, in the back yard of the Jupiter Island Olympians, and under their direction, a powerful covert operations base was now being assembled, in which George Bush would have been present at the creation as a matter of birthright.

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