See Giant Planet Jupiter Looking Its Best In New Images Just Back From NASA’s Juno Spacecraft
One of Jupiter’s northern circumpolar cyclones in artistically enhanced detail and in false color, … [+]
Close-ups of Jupiter and its gorgeous cloud-tops star in the latest batch of images sent back from NASA’s Juno orbiter.
Launched in 2011 and at Jupiter since 2016, Juno orbits the giant planet in a highly elliptical path that sees it swing-in closely to the planet’s polar regions once every five weeks or so. It’s the only time Juno takes and transmits images back to Earth.
Image data collected by JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 22,658 km … [+]
On November 6, 2022, Juno conducted its 46th perijove—close flyby—and in the days since data from its two-megapixel camera have been transmitted back to Earth via NASA’s Deep Space Network. Last month it took some stunning close-ups of Jupiter’s moon Europa.
Juno spins to keep itself stable as it makes its long oval-shaped orbits, so the images that come back need a lot of work. Cue an incredible team of volunteer “citizen scientists” who after each perijove download the raw data from the mission’s special website. Anyone can download them, process them and upload them.
“Their intellectual firepower and expertise has provided a remarkable set of images,” said Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at Cornell University and co-investigator on the Juno mission, who adds that the citizen scientists function pretty much as Juno’s science team. “There’s very little difference between them and what you would get on the Voyager or New Horizons missions … it’s changed the way we look at how planetary mission teams function and it’s been a very, very successful experiment.”
A few of the most dedicated citizen scientists working on Juno images include Kevin M. Gill, Brian Swift, Andrea Luck, Björn Jónsson, Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran, though you can see the work of many others on the JunoCam website.
Jupiter as seen by NASA spacecraft Juno on November 7, 2022, as processed by Kevin M. Gill.
This imaging experiment is not likely to be repeated on two upcoming missions to Jupiter that will essentially pick-up the baton from Juno. Both NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and European Space Agency’s JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) will have dedicated science teams responsible for processing their own images.
Europa Clipper will launch in October 2024 and arrive in late 2027 to perform about 45 flybys, in each pass photographing the moon’s icy surface in high resolution.
Jupiter as seen by NASA spacecraft Juno on November 7, 2022, as processed by Kevin M. Gill.
JUICE will launch a little earlier, in April 2023, but it won’t arrive until July 2031. Its mission is to spend three and a half years examining Europa, Ganymede and Callisto.
In June 2021, Juno got to within 600 miles of Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System, sending back some gorgeous images.
Juno’s next close flyby of Jupiter, perijove 47, will take place on December 15, 2022.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
