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Behold Jupiter

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 2, 2017
Filed under ,

Keith’s note: Stop what you are doing and watch this full screen with the sound turned to maximum so as to enjoy the sountrack excerpt from “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Video by Gerald Eichstädt reconstructed from JunoCam Images and SPICE Data and Seán Doran who post-processed the original version, and added the sound track.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

21 responses to “Behold Jupiter”

  1. Boardman says:
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    Did just what you said. Beautiful.
    And to think the JunoCam was allegedly an add-on afterthought?

    • fcrary says:
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      JunoCam was an add-on afterthought. In fact, if it had been considered necessarily for the mission’s goals, it or the mission might not have happened. JunoCam was exempt from radiation dose requirements which the actual, scientific instruments were designed to. That was because it really was a PIO add on and irrelevant to the actual mission goals.

      The real science Juno is doing involves gravity and magnetic field measurements, microwave radiometry to determine Jupiter’s bulk composition and particle and field measurements (plus UV and IR imaging) of Jupiter’s aurora.

      I’m sorry, but I get sick of people confusing pretty (actually, incredibly beautiful) pictures with science. Science is about the numbers and the details, usually displayed as wavy lines on a chart rather than an image. JunoCam is producing wonderful art. And there is plenty of good science in those images (assuming anyone is funded to extract it.) But please don’t simply look at cool images and confuse a postcard with scientific research.

      • moon2mars says:
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        I am Geology Team Leader on the Mars Exploration Rover Missions and a field geologist. Please do not tell me that there is no science in pictures.

        • fcrary says:
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          I guess I didn’t put that very well. Of course there is science in the images. But (1) that isn’t what is being discussed. The press releases, the coverage and the discussion (here and elsewhere) are focusing on the visual impact of the images not their scientific content. And (2) images are not the only sort of data with scientific content. In fact, the entire point of the Juno mission is about science from non-imaging data (except for auroral imaging.)

          It isn’t as visually appealing, but what about the interior of Jupiter? We can only see the top 150 to 200 km or so of the planet. That’s 0.2%. One of the things Juno is supposed to be all about is finding out about the other 99.8% (actually, 99% by volume.) I’d like the Juno project to put some effort into telling us about that.

      • Bob Mahoney says:
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        No Buck Rogers, no bucks.

        Your haughty tone is one of the sources of the negative image (forgive me) that scientists & science carry with the general public. As you imply, imagery CAN contribute to good science; why not acknowledge this and use it as a bridge to inclusively inform non-scientists about the broader nature of the field and all the thrill that lies therein?

        • fcrary says:
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          I’d love to, and I’m sorry if I didn’t write that comment very well. Juno has a great chance to do exactly what you suggest. The images of the aurora, in the UV and IR, are also fantastic. And they are directly connected to the mission’s science goals and other measurements. They could make a excellent bridge to the mission’s other observations.

          But the cloud images the project is making such a big deal about really are tangential to the rest of the Juno science. It’s about learning what is _below_ the clouds; I don’t see how images of the clouds and storm systems give you a bridge into that.

      • kcowing says:
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        You clearly are not as smart about space missions as you think you are. Every image coming back from Juno contains science.

        • fcrary says:
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          I didn’t mean to say otherwise, though that is how it came out. Let me put it the other way. Images are not the only data which contain science. I’m objecting to the neglect of all the mission’s non-imaging science, since that’s actually what the mission is supposed to be about.

    • kcowing says:
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      It was not part of the initial science requirements. But it is producing information of scientific value.

  2. mvanbavel says:
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    Ok did anyone else see this:
    https://uploads.disquscdn.c

    • Jack Burton says:
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      Think of the billions of years and all kinds of “faces” probably have occurred unseen by anyone.

  3. Gerald says:
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    Hi Keith, the video should also be credited to Seán Doran. He post-processed my original version, and added the sound track.

  4. fcrary says:
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    It’s going to be interesting to see how this plays out after the twelfth orbit. Since the spacecraft is on a 54 day orbit, rather than the originally planned seven or 11 day orbits, it will only get twelve orbits before the end of the prime mission. It was supposed to make 34, if memory serves. As it stands, it will only achieve its minimum, not baseline, science goals before end of prime mission. The plan is to propose an extended mission to continue and achieve everything they originally intended.

    At the same time, JunoCam (which is an add on) was only designed to survive the radiation from the first dozen orbits. It could very well fail around the end of the current prime mission.

    How would that affect their extended mission proposal? If the only results people think of when they hear Juno are images, and the imaging instrument is broken, aren’t people going to wonder why an extended mission should be funded? I suspect the senior review would think differently. But accountants in the Office of Management and Budget might not.

  5. fcrary says:
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    Sorry to reply twice, but I’d like you to expand on that final remark. What if the primary mission precluded good imaging? I’m thinking of something never getting closer than 15 jovian radii (compared to 1.05 to 3, where most of the Juno images were taken) and on an eccentric orbit where the spacecraft is on the night side over 95% of the time. A camera on such a spacecraft wouldn’t return images any better than Voyager or Galileo. Would you argue for putting a camera on it anyway (since you wrote it would be obscene not to)? Would you think such a mission wasn’t worth sending to Jupiter, since it wouldn’t produce good images? I hope not, since that would effectively rule out whole fields of planetary science.

  6. Shaw_Bob says:
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    The music, fittingly, is by Georgi Ligetti and is titled ‘atmospheres’. It is the theme of the Monoliths. Look closely at the video and you will see a train of Monoliths between the spacecraft and Jupiter – all this talk of a Europa lander must have made them somewhat frisky!

    • A_J_Cook says:
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      Actually the music is Ligetti”s Requiem for soprano, mezzo soprano, 2 mixed choirs and orchestra. In the movie, this overlaps with the instrumental Atmopheres when Dave passes through the star gate.

  7. fcrary says:
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    In point of fact, Juno _was_ selected without a camera. JunoCam and the Italian-provided IR imager, JIRAM, were added _after_ the mission was selected. At the time of selection, the only remote sensing instrument planned for Juno was the UV imaging spectrometer.

    Note: I’d have to check my notes about which selection. These instruments may have been added between the Step 1 and Step 2 selections. The Step 2 selection was between Juno and a lunar, polar sample return. I don’t think the lunar sample return had a camera either.

    For other selections, look at the Discovery program. Lunar Prospector (Discovery 3) had no imager of any sort. Genesis (Discovery 5), again, no imager. Kepler (Discovery 10), well, it’s a telescope, so it has a imager by definition. But it only images a star field which is constant to the eye and it doesn’t even send down complete images. GRAIL (Discovery 11) had a very modest imager, MoonKAM (Moon Knowledge Acquired by Middle school student), which was “an education related sub-program.” Even calling GRAIL a mission with a camera, that’s three out of 14 selected Discovery missions with no camera at all.

    In addition to Discovery, the Mars program has done without imagers on a couple of missions. Mars Odyssey didn’t have any, and MAVEN only has a UV imaging spectrometer.

    I don’t think the lack of a camera is “extremely poor public relations.” It means the public outreach people have to work harder to get people interested. Images are easy to publicize.

    More to the point, some missions just can’t do the intended science and also take impressive images. What, exactly, could Kepler do in terms of exciting images? If it’s a choice between images to engage the public and non-imaging data for the mission’s planned science, what is the right priority?

    • moon2mars says:
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      Mars Odyssey has a visible and IR (day/night) camera called THEMIS. I targeted this instrument for years and it is still doing great work.

      • fcrary says:
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        I stand corrected. I’m so used to seeing the THEMIS infrared spectra that I forget it also does visible imaging. But we may be digressing from the point (if there was one…) THEMIS didn’t produce spectacular images which really excited the public. As I understand it, the visible channel was there to put the lower resolution IR spectra in context. I guess my original point was about images for the sake of pretty pictures to put in a press release. IR and UV imaging spectra don’t fall into that category, nor do low resolution, context imagers at visible wavelength. They have tremendous scientific value, but they aren’t used very much when it comes to engaging the public.

  8. fcrary says:
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    That doesn’t really address my question. A camera for a planetary mission can be anything from the size of the one on my smart phone to the 0.5 meter primary mirror and 64 kg mass of HiRISE on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. So including one _could_ be “a big imposition”, especially for a small (e.g. Discovery-class) mission.

    What if, specifically, the mission’s science goals do not require getting within 15 or 20 jovian radii of Jupiter. That would allow the spacecraft to stay out of the radiation belts, and tremendously simplify the mission. Potentially, staying away from the radiation belts could enable a mission which would otherwise be impossible.

    Something like my cell phone couldn’t anything like decent images from that range. They would be inferior to images from Voyager or even Pioneer. If we are talking about a Discover-class mission, then a larger, more capable camera could easily be an imposition; fitting it in would cost a significant fraction of the payload mass.

    In such a case, what would you prefer? Send a non-imaging science mission? Punt on the science and select a different mission proposal, because that one can’t accommodate decent quality imaging? Or just slap on a cell phone-class camera and live with fairly lame imaging?