Posted on 07/11/2017 11:35:44 AM PDT by BenLurkin
As part of its sixth orbit of Jupiters turbulent cloud tops, Juno passed close to Jupiters center (aka. perijove), which took place at 6:55 p.m. PDT (9:55 p.m. EDT). Eleven minutes later at 7:06 p.m. PDT (10:06 p.m. EDT) the probe flew over the Great Red Spot. In the process, Juno was at a distance of just 9,000 km (5,600 miles) from the anticyclonic storm, which is the closest any spacecraft has ever flown to it.
During the flyby, Juno had all eight of its scientific instruments (as well its imager, the JunoCam) trained directly on the storm. With such an array aimed at this feature, NASA expects to learn more about what has been powering this storm for at least the past three and a half centuries. As Scott Bolton, the principal investigator of Juno at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), said prior to the event in a NASA press release:
Jupiters mysterious Great Red Spot is probably the best-known feature of Jupiter. This monumental storm has raged on the Solar Systems biggest planet for centuries. Now, Juno and her cloud-penetrating science instruments will dive in to see how deep the roots of this storm go, and help us understand how this giant storm works and what makes it so special.
This perijove and flyby of the Giant Red Spot also comes just days after Juno celebrated its first anniversary around Jupiter. This took place on July 4th at 7:30 p.m. PDT (10:30 p.m. EDT), at which point, Juno had been in orbit around the Jovian planet for exactly one year. By this time, the spacecraft had covered a distance of 114.5 million km (71 million mi) while orbiting around the planet.
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Too bad it doesn’t have a better camera for visual images.
Whoops, wrong thread. Sorry!
I'm no dermatologist.
Maybe Jupiter needs to borrow some Prep H from Uranus?
OK...of you’re not going to do anything then we are free to glassify Pyong Yang.
I LOL'd...
Not the red spot. That’s overly TMI. Geez, an invasion of privacy.
Jupiter can’t wear wear white slacks.
Oh my!
My my. We all about to get real personal with Mr Jupiter. I do hope he don’t get all gravity over it.
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