When will Galileo surpass Hubbles imaging capabilities?
The Hubble Wide Field/Planetary Camera has two imaging modes: either Wide Field or Planetary. The imaging systems on board Galileo have a resolution capability twenty times less than the Hubble Wide Field setting, and 45 times less than the Planetary. On average, Jupiter is located 5 astronomical units (one astronomical unit = the average distance from the Sun to the Earth) away from the Earth. At that distance, Galileo passed up Hubble’s Wide Field resolution of Jupiter on October 6, 1995, and passed up the Planetary on November 13, 1995. If you want to consider the best possible resolution that Hubble is capable of (namely, when Jupiter is closest to Earth–a mere four astronomical units away), Galileo passed the Wide Field performance on October 21, 1995, and the Planetary on November 18, 1995.
