Nasa published on Friday the first-ever images of Jupiter’s north pole and its southern aurora, taken during the Juno spacecraft’s first orbital flyby of the gaseous giant.
Nasa published on Friday the first-ever images of Jupiter’s north pole and its southern aurora, taken during the Juno spacecraft’s first orbital flyby of the gaseous giant.
Juno came within 2,500 miles of Jupiter on August 27 during a six-hour transit from the north pole to the south. “It looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.
“The largest planet in our Solar System is truly unique. We have 36 more flybys to study just how unique it really is.” A camera dubbed the “JunoCam” took the high-definition images. It is one of the nine instruments onboard the spacecraft. Juno notably sent the first infrared close-ups of the planet’s north and south poles. “These first infrared views of Jupiter’s north and south poles are revealing warm and hot spots that have never been seen before,” said Alberto Adriani, of the Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali in Rome. Adriani is one of the researchers who developed the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper that allowed scientists to acquire the images.
“While we knew that the first-ever infrared views of Jupiter’s south pole could reveal the planet’s southern aurora, we were amazed to see it for the first time,” he said. Auroras are streamers of light in the sky caused by energy from the sun and electrically charged particles trapped in the magnetic field. Another Juno instrument recorded sounds from Jupiter.
