Dispatched to study the Red Planet in unprecedented detail, the HiRISE camera
on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
recently turned its attention to Jupiter, which currently lies about 150 million kilometres away from Mars.
HiRISE is the most powerful telescope ever sent beyond Earth orbit, and the image it took is remarkably clear (though it had to be manually sharpened by the camera's chief optical designer, Dennis Gallagher, because mission planners accidentally forgot to set the focus for Jupiter).
The official line is that it took the image "to calibrate its pointing and colour response". But I suspect it just got bored studying the same planet day in and day out and wanted to test its super-vision on a more distant target.
Jupiter is also being scrutinised by the Pluto-bound New Horizons
probe, which will make its closest approach to the giant world on 28 February.
I wonder what - if anything - HiRISE would see if it set its sights on New Horizons' ultimate quarry?Maggie McKee, New Scientist Space editor (Image: NASA/JPL/U of Arizona)