NASA’s Juno orbiter made another close pass of Jupiter this week, and that means there’s another crop of stunning pictures embellished by legions of citizen scientists.
Every 53 days, the bus-sized spacecraft reaches the closest point in its orbit around the giant planet. The latest flyby, known as Perijove 14, took place late Sunday night and brought Juno within about 2,200 miles (3,500 kilometers) of the giant planet’s cloud tops.
Juno’s main mission is to measure Jupiter’s magnetic field and gravitational field, and gain insights about its internal composition. But it has a camera called JunoCam that’s specifically designed to provide data for image-processing gurus to work their magic with.
Offerings are being posted on the Juno mission’s website, and on Twitter as well. Here’s a sampling of the top tweets:
https://twitter.com/_TheSeaning/status/1019287197395177472
Images processed from @NASAJuno image PJ14_26 (“Hot Spot”) obtained on July 16, 2018 when the spacecraft was only 3800 km above Jupiter’s cloudtops. Two approximately true color/contrast images and two enhanced images. pic.twitter.com/EsqDtx6sXX
— Björn Jónsson (@bjorn_jons) July 19, 2018
https://twitter.com/_TheSeaning/status/1019193378313994241
https://twitter.com/_TheSeaning/status/1020091657600028672
https://twitter.com/kevinmgill/status/1019273480855019527
https://twitter.com/kevinmgill/status/1019037925944672257
https://twitter.com/kevinmgill/status/1019226814986772482
https://twitter.com/_TheSeaning/status/1019374943467921408
See a mesmerizing, high-altitude #Jupiter cloud formation in this new view captured during my latest flyby of the planet. https://t.co/v9CECQIr3P pic.twitter.com/OhCEcwGYL6
— NASA’s Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) July 19, 2018
It’s been quite a week for Jupiter: In addition to Perijove 14, the Juno team has released infrared imagery suggesting that there may be a previously undetected volcano near the south pole of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons.
The newly detected hot spot is about 200 miles from a heat source that’s already been mapped, Alessandro Mura, a Juno mission co-investigator from Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics.
“We are not ruling out movement or modification of a previously undiscovered hot spot, but it is difficult to imagine one could travel such a distance and still be considered the same feature,” Mura said in a NASA news release.
Moon of fire 🌋 Data collected by my JIRAM instrument indicates possible new volcano on #Jupiter’s moon Io. https://t.co/zybX5BTrsd pic.twitter.com/00ns6gwUvo
— NASA’s Juno Mission (@NASAJuno) July 13, 2018
Io is considered the solar system’s most volcanically active world, with more than 150 active volcanoes identified so far. Scientists estimate that another 250 are still waiting to be discovered.
And as if that’s not enough Jupiter enjoyment, this week a different group of scientists gave out details about their discovery of a dozen moons of Jupiter. The additions boost the planet’s tally of moons to 79. That’s a solar system high, and scientists say there are almost certainly more mini-moons to be found.
So what’s next? One thing we can count on is that there’ll be more gems from Jupiter in September, when Perijove 15 takes place.
