The Juno spacecraft will study Jupiter during the course of 36 more flybys. They show “signs that the clouds have shadows”, he added, meaning they might be above other features, like weather and storms unlike those on the system’s other gas giants – Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
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Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on August 5, 2011, and successfully entered the orbit of Jupiter on July 4, 2016. The data was collected during the six-hour transit, from above Jupiter’s north pole to below its south pole, took one-and-a-half days.
It is a view people can not get on Earth, and Scott Bolton, the primary investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, has pointed out the discoveries made by looking closely at the JunoCam images. It is the largest of our Solar System’s giant planets (the other three giants are Saturn, Uranus and Neptune).
But the images sent from the poles, Bolton said in a statement, are “hardly recognizable as Jupiter”.
Among the other things Juno has been collecting are recordings of ghostly-sounding transmissions coming from above the planet.
Even from afar, we always knew Jupiter was a bit of an oddball, and upon closer examination we were correct.
Jupiter has many moons – a total of sixty-seven natural satellites, of which fifty-one are less than 10km in diameter. Bolton says the first batch of data from Juno hints at future answers.
Juno spacecraft is using the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) to capture views of the giant planet’s north and south poles in infrared light. The time of closest approach with the gas-giant world was 6:44 a.m. PDT (9:44 a.m. EDT, 13:44 UTC) when Juno passed about 2,600 miles (4,200 kilometers) above Jupiter’s swirling clouds.
The US agency’s spacecraft Juno made its first close approach to the planet since entering the planet’s orbit in July.
Juno’s quest will be to inquire the secrets of the Solar System by explaining evolution and the origin of its largest planet.
We should finally find whether Jupiter has a solid center or if an ever denser state all the way to the middle is only compressed to by its gas.
Juno also sent back unique views of Jupiter’s bright southern lights considered the most powerful in the solar system.
The Juno spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral in August 2011 and arrived at Jupiter last month.
Dr Nichols said: “We’re hearing the sounds of the magnetic field from Jupiter vibrating like strings on a guitar”. This view of Jupiter was taken on August 27, 2016 when Juno was 437,000 miles (703,000 kilometers) away.
The JunoCam was not the only onboard science instrument doing some work.
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Storms on Jupiter are very tall, unlike those on Earth, which are shallow compared to the size of the area they cover, Levin said.
