APOD: Southern Jupiter from Perijove 3 (2016 Dec 17)

[APOD Robot]

Southern Jupiter from Perijove 3

Explanation: Southern Jupiter looms some 37,000 kilometers away in this JunoCam image from December 11. The image data was captured near Juno's third perijove or closest approach to Jupiter, the spacecraft still in its 53 day long looping orbit. With the south polar region on the left, the large whitish oval toward the right is massive, counterclockwise rotating storm system. Smaller than the more famous Great Red Spot, the oval storm is only about half the diameter of planet Earth, one of a string of white ovals currently in the southern hemisphere of the Solar System's, ruling gas giant.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

[/b]

[DL Martin]

If the south polar region is on the left, then isn't the white oval towards the right in the northern polar region?

[Guest]

It would be interesting to see video of it all moving, twisting around and the effects the various atmospheric disturbances manifest.

[heehaw]

Wow. I stared at the picture (caption not visible) and I asked myself "what the heck is this?" I could not answer that question. I said to myself "it sort of looks like Jupiter but it can't be Jupiter I've never seen a Jupiter image that looked like THIS!" Wow.

[neufer]

If the south polar region is on the left, then isn't the white oval towards the right in the northern polar region?

[b][color=#0000FF]Presumably the large white oval is the one shown in the animation above.[/color][/b]

---

Juno is only 37,000 kilometers above a planet of radius 71,000 kilometers so the furthest one can see in any direction is 49º of lat/long (and not the ~90º your mind might surmise). Hence we can't see any of the Northern Hemisphere unless Juno is located at least 41º of latitude north of the South Pole.

[nebosite]

It's beautiful, but for the love of Pete, WHEN will NASA give us pictures from 2500 km????

[nebosite]

I wonder why we don't see any lightning on the dark side? Too dim? Too infrequent?

[Chris Peterson]

It's beautiful, but for the love of Pete, WHEN will NASA give us pictures from 2500 km????

No perijove in the remaining orbits is lower than about 4200 km above the cloud tops. So you're not going to see anything at 2500 km until Juno is making its final dive into the planet on 2018 Feb 20.

[Keith Robinson]

What causes the colors in the Jupiter atmosphere? All different elements and chemical compounds or would there particles from the core and or space?

[Chris Peterson]

What causes the colors in the Jupiter atmosphere? All different elements and chemical compounds or would there particles from the core and or space?

Not material from the core or from space. Just the various molecules that make up the upper atmospheric clouds- combinations of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and others (which can combine to produce compounds such as water, methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide), and seen in solid, liquid, and gas phases.

[neufer]

I wonder why we don't see any lightning on the dark side? Too dim? Too infrequent?

Both too dim & too infrequent for a quick picture meant to show lighter side.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap971216.html

[nebosite]

It's beautiful, but for the love of Pete, WHEN will NASA give us pictures from 2500 km????

No perijove in the remaining orbits is lower than about 4200 km above the cloud tops. So you're not going to see anything at 2500 km until Juno is making its final dive into the planet on 2018 Feb 20.

What I am really asking is when are we going to get the closeups? The closest pictures from Junocam released so far a from > 30,000 km. Surely there are some images from closer? And these would be the highest resolution images of jupiter's clouds ever taken, right? Why has NASA not released these?

[DL Martin]

A thank you to Art Neuendorffer for his explanation regarding the visual orientation to the optical field on Jupiter. I see it much better.

[DavidLeodis]

In the image information brought up through the "this JunoCam image" link it states 'Taken 2016-12-11-173502'. I assume that the 173502 is the time and thus 17:35:02 (UT?) but I would appreciate it if someone can please verify that or state what 173502 is if it is not the time (perhaps it means 17.3502% of the way through that day).

[alter-ego]

In the image information brought up through the "this JunoCam image" link it states 'Taken 2016-12-11-173502'. I assume that the 173502 is the time and thus 17:35:02 (UT?) but I would appreciate it if someone can please verify that or state what 173502 is if it is not the time (perhaps it means 17.3502% of the way through that day).

It is the image time (UT).
At that time, JPL HORIZONS predicts a range that agrees well with the 37000km Juno altitude. Also time is the normal extension / continuation of the date, especially when there is a character connecting the date/time strings. Although the format I'm more used to seeing is yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss in ephemerides, substituting hyphens in place of spaces and colons is a also a useful file naming format (at least in Windows environments). Had I seen a file name with the date and time connected without separator characters, I would have interpreted it the same way.

[DavidLeodis]

In the image information brought up through the "this JunoCam image" link it states 'Taken 2016-12-11-173502'. I assume that the 173502 is the time and thus 17:35:02 (UT?) but I would appreciate it if someone can please verify that or state what 173502 is if it is not the time (perhaps it means 17.3502% of the way through that day).

It is the image time (UT).
At that time, JPL HORIZONS predicts a range that agrees well with the 37000km Juno altitude. Also time is the normal extension / continuation of the date, especially when there is a character connecting the date/time strings. Although the format I'm more used to seeing is yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss in ephemerides, substituting hyphens in place of spaces and colons is a also a useful file naming format (at least in Windows environments). Had I seen a file name with the date and time connected without separator characters, I would have interpreted it the same way.

Thanks for your help alter-ego .