To make it easier to see, I took Peach’s image and overlaid a circle on it centered on Jupiter as best I could:
Jupiter is highly oblate, second only to Saturn in its deviation from sphericity*. Sit on a beach ball, and you’ll get the idea. Spin it around the short axis, and you get an oblate spheroid: a flattened sphere. If you spin an ellipse around its long axis you get a prolate spheroid, similar to a football or rugby ball. In fact, we don’t call such an object a sphere any more it becomes a spheroid, the three-dimensional version of an ellipse rotated around one of its two axes. Oblateness is the term science-types use to describe how flattened a sphere is. Look, it said, you can really see how oblate Jupiter is!Īh, yes, brain. After all, this is a magnificent photo of Jupiter, and better than professional telescopes could do when I was a kid and first fell in love with astronomy!īut then my brain made up for its jackassery by coming up with a fun thought indeed. I have to admit, when I saw it, my first thought was, “Oh, that’s nice, but where’s all the fun stuff?!” My brain can be a jerk, sometimes.
This isn’t an unusual view of the planet -the spot is on the far side half the time, after all!- but it’s just not the shot you usually see posted. No moons or moon shadows are visible, either.
They’re on the other side of the planet, making Jupiter look oddly naked. It’s not the Jupiter you usually see, because the famous Great Red Spot (and the somewhat less famous Oval BA) are not visible.
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