#PPOD: The JunoCam onboard NASA's Juno spacecraft captured Jupiter’s gorgeous clouds in this image taken on May 29, 2019. Have a lovely weekend! Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS / @kevinmgill
#TIL, and i wonder why i didn’t know this before. #Jupiter and #Saturn aren’t really made up of gases, technically speaking. Almost all of it is supercritical fluid. The critical point for Hydrogen ist just 32.938 K, 1.2858 MPa, that for Helium much lower.
Otoh, supercritical fluid planet hasn’t quite the ring as gas giant.
#Éphémérides astronomiques pour janvier 2024 : la planète #Jupiter reste toujours visible le soir. Le 18 elle sera en conjonction assez serrée avec la Lune (voir image). Depuis la France métropolitaine les deux astres seront à seulement 2° l'un de l'autre. #Saturne commence à être vraiment basse sur l'horizon et n'est plus aussi bien observable. Le matin se sera #Vénus qui sera bien visible.
With the amazing images coming back from Juno's flyby of Io, I finally took a stab at processing some JunoCam images. This image shows Io's north polar region from 2839km distance.
Another look at Jupiter’s moon Io with decorrelated colors and boosted to show the dark jupitershine on the right. A lot of credit goes to the JunoCam team for recovering the camera from apparent severe radiation damage that ruined much of the last perijove images. Expect a lot of cool science to come out of this pass and the next one in February!
New images of Jupiter's moon Io! They just arrived after the Juno spacecraft flew by Io at ~1,500km from the surface. Io is a bit larger than the Earth's moon. There's over 400 active volcanoes on Io. The moon was discovered by Galileo Galilei. On March 9, 1979, JPL engineer Linda Morabito discovered a volcanic plume on Io in Voyager 1 images. The volcanism is due to Io's elliptical orbit around Jupiter which causes the moon to expanded & contract generating heat.
Amazing new images of the moon Io have come down from the Juno spacecraft! This one shows the volcanic moon of Jupiter from only 2,800 kilometers away, which is the closest look we’ve gotten of Io since the Galileo orbiter over 20 years ago. Check out all those volcanoes!!!!
#NASA 's #Juno
Perijove (orbit) 45
Altitude: 412 km
North on the left
Time: 2022-09-29T09:36
Camera: Stellar Reference Unit
File name: SRU_1_2022272T093649_45_V01
Let's get ready for Juno's highlight of the year - an extremely close flyby of Jupiter's moon Io!
The NASA Juno spacecraft will make its 57th flyby of Jupiter (Perijove 57) on Sat Dec 30 around 7:39 a.m. ET (12:39 UTC).
A few hours earlier, around 3:36 a.m. ET (08:36 UTC), it will swing by the Galilean moon Io at a distance of 1,500 km. The record will still be held by the Galileo spacecraft which came within 200 km in 2000.
Here is a list of flybys of Io by the Juno spacecraft over the past 18 months.
Current Juno orbital period = 38 earth days.
Io orbital period = 42.5 hours (1.77 days).
Juno gets close to Io on every alternate orbit.
Juno orbital period after PJ57 = 35 days, allowing it to visit Io on PJ58.
Juno orbital period after PJ58 = 33 days.
After PJ58, flyby distance to Io will increase. Also, Juno will enter Jupiter's shadow for ~5 minutes on each PJ.
NASA states that during the flyby of Io, all 3 cameras aboard Juno will be active.
The Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) will collect heat signatures of Io's volcanoes and calderas.
The Stellar Reference Unit (a highly sensitive, visible wavelength (450-1100 nm) navigational star camera also used for science data) will obtain the highest-resolution image of the surface to date.
The venerable JunoCam imager will take visible-light color images.
Here are a couple of them with some simple processing by me (the colors are exaggerated). These images were taken from 47654.8 and 16,052.1 km altitude resp. as Juno approached JupiterImages of Jupiter from 47654.8 and 16052.1 km altitude resp..
The pros will soon post their creations at the Juno website.
🟤 La sonde #Juno de la NASA va effectuer ce samedi un survol rapproché de la lune #Io de #Jupiter à 1500 km d’altitude. Un autre “flyby” est prévu le 3 février.
📷 NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS d’un précédent survol