Santa Claus isn’t the only one bearing gifts from the north pole at this time of year. NASA’s Juno orbiter also delivered a sackful of presents over the holidays, but from the pole of a different planet: Jupiter.
Every 53 days, the bus-sized spacecraft makes a close encounter with our solar system’s biggest planet, as part of a mission that was launched in 2011 and reached Jupiter in 2016.
Juno’s main mission is to study Jupiter’s magnetic field and gravitational field, to give scientists a deeper understanding of the gas giant’s internal composition. But a visible-light camera called JunoCam was included on the probe, primarily to boost public outreach and education.
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The latest encounter, known as Perijove 17, occurred on Dec. 21 and went over Jupiter’s north pole. One of the scientific objectives was to take pictures of the planet’s faint aurora with Juno’s navigational camera, known as the Stellar Reference Unit.
At the same time, JunoCam captured close-up views of Jupiter’s cloud tops, providing lots of raw imagery to keep image-processing gurus busy over the holidays.
Here’s a sampling of pictures from Perijove 17:
#JunoCam image Jupiter’s north polar region from December 21, 2018. It was taken from an altitude of ~19,300 km during the #Perijove17 pass. This image captures the numerous cloud swirls (known as folded filamentary regions) that are common in the polar regions of Jupiter. pic.twitter.com/8K5nSQXIgJ
— Justin Cowart (@jccwrt) December 25, 2018
Happy holidays from Juno at Jupiter! This is image PJ17_17 (“PJ17 Jet N5”) obtained by @NASAJuno on December 21, 2018. Approximately true color/contrast versions and enhanced versions. pic.twitter.com/5XgahahaAP
— Björn Jónsson (@bjorn_jons) December 25, 2018
And here are a few highlights from past perijoves. Stay tuned for more in 2019!
This unique view of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot from @NASAJuno Perijove 12 is made by reprojecting 5 separate images to this viewpoint and blending/healing lots in Photoshop. [ Eichstädt/Doran ] pic.twitter.com/ir2gFRWFkv
— Seán Doran (@_TheSeaning) December 23, 2018