Juno's Perijove-05 Jupiter Flyby, Reconstructed in 125-Fold Time-Lapse, Revised

2018-02-26 02:05 UT
Credit : Credit: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / SPICE / Gerald Eichstädt © cc by
Submitted By : Maquet-80
Mission Phase : PERIJOVE 5

On March 27, 2017, NASA's Juno probe performed her Perijove-05 Jupiter flyby.

For this flyby, data volume was limited, and primarily dedicated to observations of Jupiter's polar regions.

Therefore only part of Jupiter's latitudes were covered well with close-up images.

This movie is an attempt to reconstruct the flyby on the basis of the JunoCam images taken.

Due to the gaps in good latitudinal coverage, the resolution of the movie is varying.

You may notice some surface areas of Jupiter with a clear turquoise or greensih cast.

Those aren't a Jupiter surface features, but effects of some overexposure, especially of the red channel.

On the other hand, the longer exposure improved the image quality near the terminator, including the poles the observation campaign was designed for.

The movie is a reconstruction of the period of time between 2017-03-27T07:30:00.000 and 2017-03-27T09:47:00.000 in 125-fold time-lapse.

It is based on 13 of the raw JunoCam images taken during Perijove-05, and on spacecraft trajectory data provided via SPICE kernel files.

In steps of five real-time seconds, one still images of the movie has been rendered from at least one suitable raw image. This resulted in short scenes, usually of a few seconds.

Playing with 25 images per second results in 125-fold time-lapse.

Resulting overlapping scenes have been blended using the ffmpeg tool.

In natural colors, Jupiter looks pretty pale. Therefore, the still images are approximately illumination-adusted, i.e. almost flattened, and consecutively gamma-stretched to the 4th power of radiometric values, in order to enhance contrast and color.

The movie starts with a reconstructed in-bound sequence approaching Jupiter from its north. Then the orbit approaches Jupiter down to an altitude of about 4,000 km near the equator.

This is followed by a transition into the outbound orbit, during which Jupiter's south polar region comes into sight.

JunoCam was built and is operated by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego / California / USA.

Many people at NASA, JPL, SwRI, MSSS, and elsewhere have been, are, and will be required to plan and operate the Juno mission.