Juno Perijove 55, October 15, 2023 Options

[Brian Swift]

Looks like there is also a different plume that shows up in images 33 to 36.

[volcanopele]

Yep, Zamama is still active.

Nope, It's Volund!

[volcanopele]

9 images complete.

[Brian Swift]

PJ55 Io Initial downlink images overview, normal-ish color/contrast

Full resolution PNG at https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing?id=15605

[volcanopele]

Final montage of 15 images. There are 4 others, 2 at the start and end but their resolution is much lower and don't really add much to the coverage.

[Tom Tamlyn]

I'm thinking back to the time about 15 years ago when the informed expectation for images of Io was about 9 pixels for the entire image.

Of course no one back then was anticipating the trajectory modifications required by the longer orbit and extended mission timeline.

[Decepticon]

I'm thinking back to the time about 15 years ago when the informed expectation for images of Io was about 9 pixels for the entire image.

Of course no one back then was anticipating the trajectory modifications required by the longer orbit and extended mission timeline.

Makes me wonder if orbit insertion error helped these flybys happen?

[Explorer1]

The original trajectory would have flown through the radiation belts much more often. How much instruments would have degraded by now is hard to say (but it's definitely serendipitous!)

[StargazeInWonder]

Funny, because the success of this flyby led me to muse over an impractical hypothetical scenario where the Galileo Orbiter, in response to its antenna issues, was put into a "parking" orbit with minimal radiation belt flybys until a relay orbiter could be flown out to join it and let the mission resume with the combination of Galileo's instruments and high-throughput data transfer. I'm sure that that would have been wildly impractical, but this phase of Juno's mission has just a touch of the spirit of that. We now have the data throughput asset that Galileo lacked.

[mcaplinger]

The original trajectory would have flown through the radiation belts much more often.

But it would have taken data much more frequently near Jupiter, so even though the mission has been a lot longer, the amount of science data is more or less the same. Satellite encounters notwithstanding.

[volcanopele]

Global map using images from PJ55

[Bjorn Jonsson]

My version of the PJ55_29 image:



As mentioned in previous posts, a volcanic plume is visible near the limb at lower right in the PJ55_29 image. Here its brightness has been greatly exaggerated relative to other parts of the image.
North is up and this image is enlarged by a factor of 3 relative to the original, raw data.

[volcanopele]

That plume is Prometheus, also seen on PJ53.