Jupiter’s Secrets Revealed
The Juno probe's camera sends unique images of the large gas planet’s unknown regions back to Earth.
ASTRONOMY After a five year journey and 2.8 million km through the Solar System, NASA’s Juno space probe has come closer to Jupiter than any other probe. And from its orbit around the giant of the Solar System, the craft has now begun to send spectacular images back to NASA’s astronomers.
The first fly-by of Jupiter lasted six hours and took place at a distance of down to 4,200 km above the thick clouds. It took NASA 1.5 days to download those images, but they were worth the wait. Juno has taken a series of photos with a wide angle camera mounted on the probe, which show Jupiter’s north pole flooded in bluish light and a glowing red aurora near the planet’s south pole. The maximum resolution is 2-3 km/pixel.
Until February 2018, Juno will make a total of 37 orbits around Jupiter. Although Jupiter has ruled the Solar System for 4.6 billion years, scientists’ knowledge of the planet is still very limited. They do not know, whether Jupiter contains water or what the planet is made up of, but astronomers hope to get the answers to those questions and many others from Juno, which has brought an arsenal of sophisticated instruments.