Here They are! New Juno Pictures of the Great Red Spot

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Here They are! New Juno Pictures of the Great Red Spot

Here They are! New Juno Pictures of the Great Red Spot:

Earlier this week, on Monday, July 10th, the Juno mission accomplished an historic feet as it passed directly over Jupiter’s most famous feature – the Great Red Spot. This massive anticyclonic storm has been raging for centuries, and Juno’s scheduled flyby was the closest any mission has ever come to it. It all took place at 7:06 p.m. PDT (11:06 p.m. EDT), just days after the probe celebrated its first year of orbiting the planet.

And today – Wednesday, July 12th, a few days ahead of schedule – NASA began releasing the pics that Juno snapped with its imager – the JunoCam – to the public. As part of the missions’ seventh orbit around the planet (perijove 7) these images are the closest and most detailed look of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot to date. And as you can clearly see by going to the JunoCam website, the pictures are a sight to behold!

And as always, citizen scientists and amateur astronomers are already busy processing the images. This level of public involvement in a NASA mission is something quite new. Prior to every perijove, NASA has asked for public input on what features they would like to see imaged. These Points of Interest (POIs), as they are called, are then photographed, and the public has had the option of helping to process them for public consumption.

“Great Red Spot from P7 Flyover”. Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Jason Major © public domain

As Scott Bolton – the associate VP at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the Principle Investigator (PI) of the Juno mission – said in a NASA press release, “For generations people from all over the world and all walks of life have marveled over the Great Red Spot. Now we are finally going to see what this storm looks like up close and personal.” And in just the past two days, several processed images have already come in.

Consider the images that were processed by Jason Major – an amateur astronomer and graphic designer who created the astronomy website Lights in the Dark. In the image above (his own work), we see a cropped version of the original JunoCam image in order to put Jupiter’s Great Red Spot center-frame. It was then color-adjusted and enhanced to mark the boundaries of the storm’s “eye” and the swirling clouds that surround it more clearly.

On his website, Major described the method he used to bring this image to life:

“[T]he image above is my first rendering made from a map-projected PNG file which centers and fully-frames the giant storm in contrast- and color-enhanced detail… The resolution is low but this is what my “high-speed” workflow is set up for—higher resolution images will take more time and I’m anticipating some incredible versions to be created and posted later today and certainly by tomorrow and Friday by some of the processing superstars in the imaging community (Kevin, Seán, Björn, Gerald, I’m looking at you!)”

Wide-frame shot of the Great Red Spot, processed to show contrast between the storm and Jupiter’s clouds. Credit: NASA/SwRI/MSSS/Jason Major © public domain

Above is another one of Major’s processed images, which was released shortly after the first one. This image shows the GRS in a larger context, using the full JunoCam image, and similarly processed to show contrasts. The same image was processed and submitted to the Juno website by amateur astronomers Amadeo Bellotti and Oliver Jenkins – though their submissions are admittedly less clear and colorful than Major’s work.

Other images include “Juno Eye“, a close up of Jupiter’s northern hemisphere that was processed by our good friend, Kevin M. Gill. Shown below, this image is a slight departure from the others (which focused intently on Jupiter’s Great Red Spot) to capture a close-up of the swirls in Jupiter’s northern polar atmosphere. Much like the GRS, these swirls are eddies that are created by Jupiter’s extremely high winds.

The Juno mission reached perijove – i.e. the point in its orbit where it is closest to Jupiter’s center – on July 10th at 6:55 p.m. PDT (9:55 p.m. EDT). At this time, it was about 3,500 km (2,200 mi) above Jupiter’s cloud tops. Eleven minutes and 33 seconds later, it was passing directly over the anticyclonic storm at a distance of about 9,000 km (5,600 mi); at which time, all eight of its instruments were trained on the feature.

In addition to the stunning array of images Juno has sent back, its suite of scientific instruments have gathered volumes of data on this gas giant. In fact, the early science results from the mission have shown just how turbulent and violent Jupiter’s atmosphere is, and revealed things about its complex interior structure, polar aurorae, its gravity and its magnetic field.

“Juno Eye”. Credit : NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/SwRI/©Kevin M. Gill

The Juno mission reached Jupiter on July 5th, 2016, becoming the second probe in history to establish orbit around the planet. By the time the mission is scheduled to end in 2018 (barring any mission extensions), scientist hope to have learned a great deal about the planet’s structure and history of formation.

Given that this knowledge is likely to reveal things about the early history and formation of the Solar System, the payoffs from this mission are sure to be felt for many years to come after it is decommissioned.

In the meantime, you can check out all the processed images by going to the JunoCam sight, which is being regularly updated with new photos from Perijove 7!

Further Reading: NASA, JunoCam, Lights in the Dark

The post Here They are! New Juno Pictures of the Great Red Spot appeared first on Universe Today.

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Wednesday, July 12, 2017