Absolutely spectacular stuff, well worth the wait. Congrats to the team for pulling it off.

Isn't that just a roundabout way of saying it's the most colorful and contrastful world apart from Earth.

Hey... no ice, no problem

Wow! For an Io loyalist, you sure can produce a heck of an Europa image product

That was way faster than I expected, wow


This brings a tear of joy to my eye, amazing work, Brian!

The PSF on that reminded me of the good ol'e days of Cassini which is high praise for JunoCam. Superb work by all involved, it was a long time coming and it was executed flawlessly as far as I can I gather.

Not sure why this kind of a documentary was so long in the making, but I loved the first part. What blew me away was the fact that there was actual HD footage I saw for the first time of events I thought were only ever captured in (worse than) SD quality.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY-hQJ5pMd4

Very much looking forward to part II.

Allow me to congratulate you on executing and capturing what, by all accounts appears to be a great dataset, if the green filter product alone is to be any indication. Even that quicklook looks awesome, absolutely the best coverage of Ganymede we got since Galileo.

Heck, even that Stellar Reference Unit image completely blows away any post-Galileo imagery.

Yes, the Martian atmosphere is a pretty high vacuum from a rocketry perspective and so any gas exiting the nozzle will also tend to expand outward due to virtually no atmospheric backpressure - not like a tightly collimated exhaust plume you can get at 1bar on the surface of Earth.

Additionally, the hydrazine monopropellant thrusters use catalytic decomposition and the temperature goes up to around 1000 deg C in the chamber (quite a bit lower than a bipropellant fuel), but once it passes the chamber throat and starts expanding in the nozzle that exhaust will drop in temperature fast. The exhaust hitting the surface is moving fast, but it might not actually be all that hot*. Even if there was some refraction happening (IMHO I'm skeptical that it would be noticeable), it would happen some ways downstream where the chaotic mixing is strongest and neither camera view really showed that. Maybe if there was a camera on the rover looking sideways toward the horizon through the plumes, while hanging under the bridles something could have been seen, but at that point there was a lot of dust kicked up anyway.

* Well, "(not) hot" is probably the wrong term to use here, the gas molecules will have pretty much the same kinetic energy, it's just more directional than random. There probably is still quite a bit of localized shock heating once the plume hits the surface.

That's reassuring to hear. One could sort of expect this from (well, almost) off-the shelf commercial EDL cameras, but the navcams are on a whole other level.


Yep, looks like they started download on the full quality, Bayered RDC camera views.

On a side note, I found it interesting how the color balance between RDC and DDC was so different. Yes, different detector resolutions, but same vendor.

Speaking of raw images, are these weird colorations due to something wrong with the pipeline or the cameras themselves (I'm thinking and hoping it's the former)?
Examples attached, one is a NavCam-L from yesterday (seems to have been pulled since), the other an RDC frame.

I really wish those of us outside the U.S. could also get to see these kinds of documentaries without this geo-lock stuff.

Yes, those images seem to have been pulled. I can't find the corresponding-looking Navcam-L image anymore.

There's been a new batch of color navcams posted on the raw site, but these ones have an odd blue hue to them. Example.

I hope it's a raw image site issue and not something with the camera.

I wasn't aware of that, my assumption based on reading between the lines on Juno mission extension a few weeks ago was that the high level was approved. I don't have the Juno proposal on hand right now, could you elaborate on what kind of Europa science would be lost with this medium level?

Yes, but does that explain that even the single full resolution, greyscale hazcam image posted on the raw site has still not been finalized?
Not to mention the color hazcams they already showed at the presser. I can wait for the EDL engineering camera sweetness until the presser for that maximum wow factor, they deserve that chance as far as I'm concerned, but they sure could have put a filter on uploading those camera data and not prevent "basic" hazcam imagery from being posted.

It's as if the raw image site is just plain dead, almost 3 days after the landing. My memory might be fading, but I don't recall this sort of thing happening with MSL.

Then again, I'm not a U.S. taxpayer so I'm not allowed to complain, this is just an observation. I see a lot of comments on the web about "entitlement" and, to be fair, yes, we were spoiled by NASA's raw image release policies in the past. On the other hand, doesn't NASA pride themselves on full disclosure and public engagement? Unless this raw image site thing is a bug, it sort of indicates a revert to ESA and other space agency policies. Well, you can't have your cake and eat it, can you? Unless "public engagement" nowadays simply means taking questions from social media during live broadcasts.

Also available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPrbJ63qUc4

I agree, that would be a most amazing period of exploration, although I don't like counting chickens until they are hatched, as they say.

The Jupiter system is still my favorite (sorry, Saturn) in terms of diversity and some of the "big" questions we want answered. I may be very biased here, but then again, so is my avatar image...

Beautiful videos, but the "Nadir" one has me scratching my head. Based on the inclination of the ISS orbit and the ground track motion over Italy, it makes me think the sequence is actually running backwards in time?

Also, in the aurora video, it's almost just as fascinating to look for satellites moving in the background as dim dots as well as a sunglint off of one at 11 seconds into the video.

I'd guess the jagged limb Earth displays indicating this is an orthographic projection (due to noticeable s/c motion or whatever) instead of a straight-up RGB composite.

Thank you and farewell, Cassini.

You will be missed.

Are you using the MCC_MRC 16 bit or MCC_MRD 32 bit products? The MRDs are supposed to be radiometrically calibrated products, while the MRC are only the detector readout DNs. The former *theoretically* shouldn't produce brightness variations.

Awesome work, Gerald!

Heh, it looked like half a rotation to me, but now that you mention it I can make out a full sine curve. Cool stuff!

If the timespan of those images matches up (around 3 days) I think you've nailed it, Emily.

I agree, that is virtually guaranteed to be scattered light in the optics.