Juno's Perijove-20 Jupiter Flyby, Reconstructed in 125-Fold Time-Lapse

2019-06-20 10:17 UT
Credit : Credit: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / SPICE / Gerald Eichstädt © cc by
Submitted By : Maquet-80
Mission Phase : PERIJOVE 20

On May 29, 2019, NASA's Juno probe successfully performed her Perijove-20 Jupiter flyby.

The movie is a reconstruction of the 2 hours and 30 minutes between 2019-05-29T07:20:00.000 and 2019-05-29T09:50:00.000 in 125-fold time-lapse.

It is based on 32 of the JunoCam images taken, 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.

Like for previous flybys, Juno approached Jupiter from north, and left Jupiter looking towards the soutern hemisphere. Closest approach to Jupiter was 7,244 km above the nominal IAU 1-bar level, and near 20.3 degrees north (planetocentric), according to long-term planning of November 2017.

Above the equatorial zone, JunoCam took RGB images as frequently as technically possible, each about 90 seconds, in other words, each 3rd spacecraft revolution.

This strategy returned well-resolved images of fairly small wave and cloud features. They are visible in the movie near time 00:26.

Also noteworthy are the vortices in the north, possibly spreading left-overs of some of the very turbulent nearby folded filametary region (FFR). They are best visible between 00:11 and 00:17. Some of the vortices are very dark, and may show us deeper layers of Jupiter's atmosphere, remotely similar to the cloudless eye of a hurricane on Earth.

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

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