28/06/2016
Jupiter and its satellites seen by ‘people’s camera’ on Juno probe
The visible camera on NASA’s Juno spacecraft is capturing a time-lapse movie of Jupiter and its four largest moons as the orbiter dives toward the giant planet for a 4 July rendezvous, and officials have released a first taste of the views armchair scientists and space enthusiasts can anticipate over the coming weeks and months.
The JunoCam instrument aboard Juno captured the colour view of Jupiter and its moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto on 21 June at a distance of 10.9 million kilometres (6.8 million miles) from Jupiter. NASA released the picture Friday.
The golden hues of Jupiter’s atmospheric bands are just coming into view, and JunoCam will resolve more detail in the coming days.
Derived from a descent imager carried by NASA’s Curiosity rover to Mars, JunoCam will gather hundreds of pictures during Juno’s 20-month mission at Jupiter.
A few of the images, such as views collected during Juno’s approach to Jupiter this month, are part of Juno’s main science campaign and pre-selected by researchers on the mission team. Officials will string together a sequence of images taken by JunoCam this month into a time-lapse movie showing the celestial dance of Jupiter and its moons as Juno dives toward the giant planet’s north pole.
No such view has ever been seen before.
“We’ve had a number of spacecraft that have flown past Jupiter and taken pictures and taken movies, but they have always been in the equatorial plane,” says Candice Hansen from the Planetary Science Institute, a member of Juno’s science team responsible for planning the mission’s camera operations. “This mission is the first one where we really get up over the polar regions.”
https://astronomynow.com/2016/06/26/jupiter-and-its-satellites-seen-by-peoples-camera-on-juno-probe/
The JunoCam instrument on NASA’s Juno spacecraft took this picture of Jupiter and its four largest moons 21 June. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
