Juno Perijove 60, April 9, 2024 Options

[mcaplinger]

First batch of Io images from PJ60 have been posted on missionjuno.

[Brian Swift]

PJ60_54 long (6 times longer) exposure Io image. Left side of each image illuminated by Sun, right side by Juipter-shine.
Left image is tone mapped. Right image is stretched and gamma adjusted to give more detail to plume and has post-stretch saturated region masked out.

[StargazeInWonder]

Great work by those who processed the images on this and previous flybys.

To an extent, this seems to end the lion's share of the value that Juno will ever provide. There are more perijoves and perhaps – hopefully – some powerful new science will result, but clearly the great majority of the gravity science that would ever be coming has already been collected, and the best of the Io imagery is already in hand. Whether Juno has more surprises in store or not, this has been a great mission, to some extent making up for the bad luck of the Galileo Probe missing the clouds almost 30 years ago. I still remember the key orbital burn that happened to be right before July 4 fireworks in 2016, and so many of the people who read this board and many more who don't did phenomenal work to make this mission superb. Maybe the ammonia mushballs are the most visceral discovery; perhaps the diffuseness of the core is the most important. The satellite imagery and all of those cloud images have been an incredible science bonus from a supposedly PR-only instrument. What a great ride, and even if it is mainly all behind us, it filled in wonderfully until the next two missions get to the jovian system in about 6 years.