Juno team creates dramatic animation of Ganymede/Jupiter fly-by
Using images from Juno’s fly-by of both Ganymede and Jupiter on June 7th and 8th, the science team has produced a dramatic animation, with background music, showing that fly-by from the point of view of the spacecraft.
I have embedded it below the fold.
The 3:30-minute-long animation begins with Juno approaching Ganymede, passing within 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) of the surface at a relative velocity of 41,600 mph (67,000 kph). The imagery shows several of the moon’s dark and light regions (darker regions are believed to result from ice sublimating into the surrounding vacuum, leaving behind darkened residue) as well as the crater Tros, which is among the largest and brightest crater scars on Ganymede.
It takes just 14 hours, 50 minutes for Juno to travel the 735,000 miles (1.18 million kilometers) between Ganymede and Jupiter, and the viewer is transported to within just 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) above Jupiter’s spectacular cloud tops. By that point, Jupiter’s powerful gravity has accelerated the spacecraft to almost 130,000 mph (210,000 kph) relative to the planet.
Among the Jovian atmospheric features that can be seen are the circumpolar cyclones at the north pole and five of the gas giant’s “string of pearls” – eight massive storms rotating counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere that appear as white ovals. Using information that Juno has learned from studying Jupiter’s atmosphere, the animation team simulated lightning one might see as we pass over Jupiter’s giant thunderstorms.
The lightning shown on Jupiter, while entertaining, is a complete fantasy. The flashes are much too bright and large. At the scale created, some would cover the Earth. In reality, that lightning wouldn’t be visible until you are very very close, and even then probably difficult to spot in the vastness of Jupiter.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Using images from Juno’s fly-by of both Ganymede and Jupiter on June 7th and 8th, the science team has produced a dramatic animation, with background music, showing that fly-by from the point of view of the spacecraft.
I have embedded it below the fold.
The 3:30-minute-long animation begins with Juno approaching Ganymede, passing within 645 miles (1,038 kilometers) of the surface at a relative velocity of 41,600 mph (67,000 kph). The imagery shows several of the moon’s dark and light regions (darker regions are believed to result from ice sublimating into the surrounding vacuum, leaving behind darkened residue) as well as the crater Tros, which is among the largest and brightest crater scars on Ganymede.
It takes just 14 hours, 50 minutes for Juno to travel the 735,000 miles (1.18 million kilometers) between Ganymede and Jupiter, and the viewer is transported to within just 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) above Jupiter’s spectacular cloud tops. By that point, Jupiter’s powerful gravity has accelerated the spacecraft to almost 130,000 mph (210,000 kph) relative to the planet.
Among the Jovian atmospheric features that can be seen are the circumpolar cyclones at the north pole and five of the gas giant’s “string of pearls” – eight massive storms rotating counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere that appear as white ovals. Using information that Juno has learned from studying Jupiter’s atmosphere, the animation team simulated lightning one might see as we pass over Jupiter’s giant thunderstorms.
The lightning shown on Jupiter, while entertaining, is a complete fantasy. The flashes are much too bright and large. At the scale created, some would cover the Earth. In reality, that lightning wouldn’t be visible until you are very very close, and even then probably difficult to spot in the vastness of Jupiter.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Very cool indeed, I imagine the lightning spots are an artifact of the image processing in between the the frames. Juno has a telephone camera grade imaging capacity, which ( as I have argued here before) , I think is almost criminal. Imagine the images and REAL movies, rather than frames several minutes apart merged together to make a “smooth” movie.
I am all about exploration of the solar system, and all behind answering the “big” questions, but at the same time, it is tax payers money being spent. I know this is a NASA mission, and involves non of my tax dollars, but if an ESA mission went to Jupiter with a crappy camera bolted on as an afterthought,.I would be annoyed!
The thrill we civilians get from the exploration of the solar system is from the pretty pictures. The measurement of solar wind distortion or gravity curves is very important to science, but to most non-scientists ( myself included!) It’s the photos and movies that provide the bang for the buck…. And the fact JUNO was approved without any kind of camera speaks to me… The pictures it returns will be a well for the scientific community for years to come, along with all the other data… But that other data will never engage us, or the next generation of scientists as much as the wonderful, intriguing and captivating images do.
Go Juno! For a “saved” mission, it’s doing its job, albeit slower than planned, but imagine that fly by with a decent HD camera…
This mission is one of my pet peeves… Sorry for ranting!
Love and lit!
WOW! If you were to play this in an IMAX theater people would fall over! Serious Fun for the eyes!
In other news, the massive Shanghai Astronomy Museum opened today.
Robert wrote: “In reality, that lightning wouldn’t be visible until you are very very close, and even then probably difficult to spot in the vastness of Jupiter.”
Lightning is a fascinating topic. One Jupiter probe, possibly Galileo, had an instrument that could detect electrons in Jupiter’s magnetic field. Since lightning tends to inject electrons into a planet’s magnetic field, this instrument indirectly detected lightning at Jupiter. I worked with one scientist who studied sprites shortly after they were discovered, a phenomenon that occurs above lightning strikes on Earth. He once quoted to me that another expert estimated that there could be as many as 100 lightning strikes per second on Earth. Jupiter is much larger, so there could be much, much more lightning there.
How visible these strikes might be could depend upon how deep they are below the top cloud layer.
Hypothesized shallow lightning on Jupiter:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/lightning-and-mushballs-on-jupiter/
Notice that more lightning is seen in the night side than the day side of the Earth:
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/the-evening-pause/iss-symphony-timelapse-of-earth/
I’m not sure what kind of photography would be needed to capture lightning strikes or the auroras at Jupiter, or how many frames per second one would need to count the strikes per second, but the limitations of the Deep Space Network may limit this kind of study.
From the linked JPL article:
What is a “citizen scientist” and how can someone become one?
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/400/gerald-eichstadt/
It looks like a citizen scientist does freelance data reduction on topics that interest him, and he gets to be one by having interest, skillsets, and tenacity.
Edward: All Juno raw images are released immediately to the public, which is then encouraged to enhance and process them. Eichstadt has done quite a number, including many that I have featured as cool images. See the Juno raw image page here.
Edward said ” . . . gets to be one by having interest, skillsets, and tenacity.”
Kind of how one gets to ‘be’, or do, anything.