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Astronomy: Galileo
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Galileo was a spacecraft named after the famous Galileo Galilei and was launched on 18 october 1989 on board of the space shuttle Atlantis. From 1995 until 2003 it orbited around Jupiter and observed this large planet and its moons. On 21 september 2003 Galileo had travelled a total of 4.631.778.000 km (2.878.053.500 miles) and had used most of its fuel. It was directed into Jupiter's atmosphere to burn up. Galileo has provided us with 14.000 pictures; more than 30 gigabytes of data. Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact into Jupiter's atmosphereFrom 16 July through 22 July 1994, pieces of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with Jupiter. This was the first collision of two solar system bodies ever to be observed; the effects of the comet impacts on Jupiter's atmosphere have been simply spectacular.Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 consisted of at least 21 discernable fragments with diameters estimated at up to 2 kilometers. These four pictures are taken 2,3 seconds apart and show us the impact of the last major fragment of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into Jupiter's night side. The first image was taken at 8:06:12 UTC and no impact is visible. In the second picture a bright point of light appears superimposed on the dark side of Jupiter's southern hemisphere. In the third image, the impact has grown very bright. In the final Galileo image at 8:06:19 UTC the impact flash has faded.  Related subjects>> Comets>> Jupiter >> Galileo Galilei >> Official Galileo internetsite: top 10 images from Galileo |
Impression of Galileo  Color image data taken between 1995 and 1998 was used to create this image of Jupiter's moon Europa. |
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