Planetary Picture of the Day
Week of March 6, 2023
A meteorite on Mars, Jupiter's complicated clouds from pole to pole, and the Earth from space.
Monday, March 6, 2023
Venus, Jupiter, and the Galilean Moons
A lovely photograph of the conjunction of Venus (top) and Jupiter (bottom) over the Dolomites in Italy, seeming to land on Mount Soratiera. Note the four smaller dots next to Jupiter: those are the Galilean moons Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, and Io.
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Full Moon
This month's full Moon is today, March 7; however, this picture was taken from the International Space Station by NASA astronaut Jeff Williams back in 2016. Note the slight flattening on the Moon's bottom edge due to the effect of Earth's atmosphere.
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
Mars Meteorite
Yet another meteorite on Mars! This image was taken by the Mastcam onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on Sol 3735. Sol (from the Latin word for sun) is a solar day on Mars; a Mars day is almost 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. We count Mars missions from their landing, and Curiosity has been roving on the red planet for 3755 Sols now.
Thursday, March 9, 2023
Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Earth Lineup
Three planets and our moon put on a show for astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year aboard the International Space Station to conduct research of long-duration space flight.
From bottom to top: Earth's Moon, Venus, Jupiter and the crescent of Earth at the top.
Friday, March 10, 2023
JunoCam Captures a Northern Jet on Jupiter
This image of a "jet" in Jupiter's atmosphere was taken by the JunoCam public engagement camera aboard NASA's Juno spacecraft on May 23, 2022.
Jupiter's atmosphere is organized into belts and zones, separated by jets, which are associated with turbulence along belt-zone boundaries, leading to chaotic regions of multicolored clouds. In this image, the color in these two regions has been enhanced to bring out detail and show the different layers of cloud decks.
Juno's orbit around Jupiter changes every time the spacecraft passes the giant planet, with the point of closest approach – the perijove, or "PJ" – moving steadily northward. As the perijove changes, the resolution of images taken in the northern hemisphere steadily increases. This image of Jet N3 was acquired on PJ42, Juno's 42nd pass by Jupiter, at 41.6 degrees north from an altitude of 3,800 kilometers. It shows features as small as 2.6 kilometers across.
