[X] My Assistant

[Candy Hansen]

A lot has happened and it seemed like a good time to start a new post. We will be staying in 53 day orbits until the project has a full understanding of the risks that may or may not be associated with reducing the orbit period to 14 days per our previous plan.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

I recently decided to take a look at data from the early perijoves when my JunoCam processing pipeline didn't work as well as it does now (or not at all ;-). In fact it's striking to see the big improvement in image quality from everyone here processing JunoCam images when early images from e.g. PJ3 are compared to the recent ones. For example I processed a few PJ4 and PJ5 images when they were released but now I want to reprocess them. But first I decided to process something I haven't processed earlier: PJ3 images.

This is image PJ3_114 which shows the SEB west of the Great Red Spot.

Approximately true color/contrast:



Enhanced versions:




Lots of cloud shadows and vertical relief are visible, especially in the 'central' image (the one where the limb isn't visible). The solar elevation angle is low in these images - in the early perijoves, closest approach occurred much closer to the terminator than later in the mission (at the time of this writing perijove 20 is the most recent perijove). The color coded image below shows the solar elevation angle in one of the above images. In contrast, the subsolar point is visible in some of the PJ20 images.



Below are details from the first true color/contrast image above enlarged by a factor of 3. The image shows Jupiter's horizon near the evening terminator. Jupiter's bright and blue evening sky is clearly visible at the limb. In the right half of the image there are also possible hints of a slightly more reddish color at lower altitudes than the blue color. This is probably a real feature although a processing artifact cannot be completely ruled out. I have processed a number of JunoCam images where Jupiter's sky is visible at the limb. Of these images, this is probably the one that best shows the Jovian sky.