NASA Releases First-Ever Close-Up Images of Jupiter's North Pole (npr.org)

NASA has released the first close-up images of Jupiter's north pole captured by the Juno spacecraft, taken during the probe's first flyby of the planet with its instruments switched on. "The images show storm systems and weather activity unlike anything previously seen on any of our solar system's gas-giant planets," writes Tony Greicius via NASA. NPR reports: "NASA also released an image of Jupiter's southern aurora, a unique view that could be captured only by a spacecraft close to Jupiter. The aurora occurs when energized particles from the sun interact with Jupiter's atmosphere near the planet's poles. The space agency also released audio of what the aurora sounds like if you convert it to a frequency the human ear can hear. The pictures and data were collected Aug. 27, when June made the first of some three dozen scheduled close encounters with Jupiter. At its closest approach, the spacecraft was a mere 2,500 miles above the planet's cloud tops." The images can be found here. You can also listen to Jupiter's auroras via YouTube. Spoiler: they sound like a dial-up modem.

Comments

Re:Impressive...

[Rei]

Good to know I'm not the only person underwhelmed by Juno.

I tried to get myself excited about this one, but I just can't. The target is way down on my list of "unsolved things in the solar system to investigate", and the mission profile uninteresting. I was telling myself, well, at least you're going to get a bunch of pretty pictures out of it. Well, honestly, these aren't that great, and this was the closest pass. The quality is underwhelming, and at least to my eye the poles look basically like the rest of the planet, just with more upwelling-driven storms and less banding effects.

Of all of the ways NASA could have spent $1,1 billion...

Well, maybe there will at least be some interesting papers that come out of it. Onward to OSIRIS-REx, another billion-plus dollar mission that I find myself trying to be excited for in its own right rather than thinking about the other ways that money could have been allocated. But at least we get a sample return out of that. Which is not just useful in its own right but also helps advance our experience with robotic sample returns, which is pretty limited (Luna, Stardust, and Hayabusa... and the Luna tech is obsolete). That said, the sample return results from Hayabusa were pretty underwhelming. Basically, "Hey, the sample return from this LL chondrite is just like LL chondrites on Earth". Now, Stardust had some interesting work come from it... but I just have a nagging feeling that we're spending a billion dollars to get a "Hey, the sample return from this carbonaceous asteroid is just like carbonaceous chondrites on Earth" moment.

To all those wanting pretty pictures.

[wjcofkc]

I too have been hoping for stunning and terrifying up close images of Jupiter, however it comes as no surprise that they are not so incredible. They sent the probe into the harshest space environment in the solar system: the fierce radiation at the north pole of Jupiter. They sent the probe to do hard science, not send back inspiring photos - although we have eighteen months of mission left so we will see. A large part of the mission follows the mantra, "Get in and get the hell out". Which is to say before they lose the probe to radiation. The entirety of the mission is 18 months, so we will have to wait and see what follows.