[HN Gopher] New images of Jupiter
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New images of Jupiter
Author : 0xFACEFEED
Score : 390 points
Date : 2024-11-06 07:30 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.missionjuno.swri.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.missionjuno.swri.edu)
| ohmahjong wrote:
| These kinds of images never fail to amaze me. I know there some
| editing going on to make them more visually
| accessible/impressive, but wow. Images are only going to get
| better, too.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| It will be fascinating to see how the long running image of
| Jupiter, striated with a series of bands of distinct colour
| with a clear big "dot", will get replaced with more updated
| ones like this, chaotic, swirly, almost painterly in the ways
| the colours blend.
| grahamj wrote:
| Beyond the appearance what always gets me is the scale. You see
| these beautiful swirls and then realize you could fit a planet
| in them. It's mind boggling.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Jupiter is so beautiful, the patterns in the clouds are
| incredible!
| magicalhippo wrote:
| JunoCam[1] is not a scientific instrument on Juno. It was added
| just to make cool images like this for us to enjoy. I for one is
| happy for that.
|
| Of course, data is data so there is some science planned using
| it.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JunoCam
| -5m wrote:
| This should be a thing on more future space missions. Cant wait
| for the images of Europa Clipper!
| sidcool wrote:
| It's so scary! All those swirls are like planet size hurricanes.
| Had Jupiter been bigger, it would have been a star, and life on
| earth would not have existed. Gives me chills.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Jupiter will forever regret the path it did not take.
| sidcool wrote:
| Just like me /s
| lbltavares wrote:
| Jupiter would need to weigh 13 times its current mass to become
| a brown dwarf, and about 83 to 85 times its mass to become a
| low-mass star [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.astronomy.com/science/ask-astro-could-jupiter-
| ev...
| chongli wrote:
| Also interesting to note that the combined mass of all
| planets in the solar system is only about 1.4 Jupiter masses
| (or 0.0014 Solar masses). The Sun did not leave us much to
| work with if we're hoping to build a second star!
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Earth's mass is _something_ times 10^24. Jupiter 's mass is 2
| x 10^27. The smallest stars are 8 x 10^28.
|
| On an exponential scale, Jupiter is closer to being a star
| than it is to being Earth. So... _maybe_ you could say that
| Jupiter is almost a star. With such loose definitions talking
| about astronomical scales, there 's a lot of room for
| interpretation and exaggeration.
|
| I think the point is--in the spirit of appreciating Jupiter--
| Jupiter resembles the largest possible planets.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| In case anyone was wondering, that something is about 6kg.
| mr_toad wrote:
| > Had Jupiter been bigger, it would have been a star, and life
| on earth would not have existed.
|
| Not sure a small star (e.g red-dwarf size) in Jupiter's orbit
| would make much difference to Earth, other than it being
| brighter at night when it's in the sky.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Anything that reminds me that we are living in an environment
| thin as an eggshell on a grain of sand surrounded by an
| infinite cold and deadly vacuum, punctuated by hellfires that
| would evaporate our hole planet if we got to close.
|
| There are so preciously few places like Earth. How I wish more
| of us cared about it.
| vasco wrote:
| It doesn't care about us, and we don't need to "care" for it,
| it's going to be fine without us. What we don't do is care
| for ourselves, which is what you're really saying, self-
| preservation. The earth doesn't give two shits if it's 50
| degrees warmer. You can't even say it's to protect life,
| because some forms of life will do way better in a warmer
| planet too. The universe / nature is gnarly already, much
| more than we can ever be, and plus, whatever we do, we're
| nature too. So in a way you're saying nature doesn't care for
| itself.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| I can't help find such edgy cynism nothing else than
| juvenile. Yeah, sure, in the end nothing matters and the
| universe doesn't give a fuck about you.
|
| And life on earth is just an accident, and that
| intelligence and consciousness exists here for a very brief
| time on the universe's path to heath death doesn't matter
| at all. Except of us poor conscious beings who find joy in
| being alive and actually have the capacity to marvel,
| because it is marvellous that we can, and we should.
|
| And I care that it is us who inhabits the earth, and not
| slugs.
| meowster wrote:
| > us poor conscious beings who find joy in being alive
| and actually have the capacity to marvel, because it is
| marvellous that we can, and we should.
|
| > And I care that it is us who inhabits the earth, and
| not slugs.
|
| That's not mutually exclusive with the comment you were
| replying to.
|
| I agree with both of your comments except for your
| opinion that the first comment is "edgy cynism" and
| "juvenile".
| vasco wrote:
| I thought my point flowed nicely from yours, sorry you
| didn't like it. For me it's about not having these
| visions of grandure about us as some protectors of the
| universe and instead accept our tiny place in all this.
| For example even your concept that our consciousness is
| more important than slugs or rocks, is all
| rationalization on your part to make your place in the
| universe have some meaning. Anyway, I don't then use this
| fun thought experiments to justify not recycling or
| denying human impacting climate change if that was what
| put you off.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Jupiter's perihelion is only 5AU from the sun. I suspect that
| Jupiter could fall well short (mass-wise) of being a star, yet
| still be big enough to destabilize Earth's orbit.
| -5m wrote:
| These are beautiful! I wonder why they host the full resolution
| pictures on Flickr and not on their own servers though.
| quincunx wrote:
| Why is Jupiter so colorful?
|
| If the variation of color are indicative of a similar variation
| in density, why is there so much turbulence in Jupiter, why are
| the upper layers not more consistent? Tidal motion? Anyone know?
| oersted wrote:
| It says exaggerated color/contrast. It seems to be a trend
| lately like the recent images of the Moon and Pluto. They might
| even be translating non-visible spectra to color so the
| material composition can be distinguished better, like they do
| with nebula and such.
|
| It is well intentioned, it makes the images much more
| informative, and they are just really cool, which helps with
| public support. But it is also a bit misleading and confuses
| people.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| In this post[1] there's a JunoCam picture from a previous
| flyby, which has been adjusted to be roughly as a human would
| see it. Still a lot of color though!
|
| This[2] paper studies the ovals but has some details on the
| atmosphere, including the colors:
|
| _The reddish color is usually attributed to red
| "chromophores", which are products of a series of complex
| chemical reactions, such as the UV photolization of ammonia
| with acetylene. These chromophores can act as coating material
| for the ammonia particles._
|
| _The cloud structure of the Jupiter 's atmosphere, and in
| particular the nature of vortex features, as the [Great Red
| Spot] and the white ovals, is still puzzling._
|
| This[3] paper tries to reproduce the reactions in the lab and
| compare them with the observed colors. It goes into some more
| details around the potential color formation.
|
| I also want to just include this picture[4] because I just love
| the tiny fluffy clouds, which shadows provides amazing depth
| feeling.
|
| [1]: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia25018-nasas-juno-
| mission-...
|
| [2]:
| https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/201...
| _Characterization of the white ovals on Jupiter 's southern
| hemisphere using the first data by the Juno/JIRAM instrument_
|
| [3]: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2016.03.008 _Chromophores
| from photolyzed ammonia reacting with acetylene: Application to
| Jupiter's Great Red Spot_ (use the hub of science for full
| paper)
|
| [4]: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241103.html
| lm28469 wrote:
| You can assume almost every space images you see are "false
| colors" unless stated otherwise
|
| https://science.nasa.gov/resource/jupiter-in-true-and-false-...
|
| https://www.cnet.com/science/space/why-nasas-image-of-jupite...
| 768DataSeeker wrote:
| The colour combo, so cool
| Aachen wrote:
| These come from Juno, a mission sent in 2011 and orbiting Jupiter
| since 2016. Must say it wasn't really on my radar anymore, but
| looking at the timeline on Wikipedia, it's still going around and
| getting close ("perijove") every month and a week or so, at an
| ever-increasing longitude
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)#Timeline The
| planned end of the mission is in about a year. The camera was
| "included in the payload to facilitate education and public
| outreach [but] later re-purposed to study the dynamics of
| Jupiter's clouds"
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Yeah, they had to fight so hard to get that camera on there! It
| was not included in the initial designs since it wasn't
| necessary for the science objectives.
| Aachen wrote:
| Makes me wonder what it costs to send a "simple" camera
| along. Factors that make it probably not so simple: even 200
| grams of camera (and extra solar panels to supply +10W while
| operating) probably costs many thousands of euros in rocket
| fuel and emission taxes. The engineering time to properly
| fixate it onto the spacecraft, integrate the software, and
| test the whole thing cost probably a few ten thousands in
| salaries. Radiation may be a big problem for what's otherwise
| off-the-shelf hardware, that might mean the hardware costs
| much more (tens of thousands instead of a couple hundred
| euros potentially?) and gets significantly heavier from
| shielding, but I wouldn't know how much. Is that about right,
| am I missing something major and/or am I off on orders of
| magnitude somewhere?
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Yeah, you got a lot of it and the ripple effect of things
| that go out from it. In addition to the extra mass of the
| camera and solar arrays, there is extra mass for the
| harnessing to connect the camera to the computer and
| engineering design for that as well. Integration of
| anything else on the spacecraft will have to go through
| Failure Modes Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA).
| Basically, this gets in to pretty detailed circuit design
| analysis and makes sure that any failure on the camera
| itself (like a short circuit or babbling idiot data bus)
| won't impact the rest of the spacecraft.
|
| Potential cost of increased storage onboard the spacecraft
| if it is significant data volume. Cost of downlinking the
| data to the ground, time on the DSN is expensive. I think
| the cost data sheets for DSN usage are online and it
| depends on data rate, what dish you are using, etc. but
| costs for usage are on the order of thousands per hour and
| data rates from Jupiter are pretty slow.
|
| The cost of the camera itself is likely on the order of a
| couple hundred thousand. I've seen similar costs for small
| radiation hardened cameras and star trackers. The
| difference in parts cost for some things can be absolutely
| insane. Passive electrical components certainly cost more,
| but for active circuits it can be insane. A radiation
| hardened equivalent of a $20 FPGA can be something like
| $20,000.
|
| All told, cost of integration and use over the mission is
| likely at least a few million. But on a $1.1 billion
| mission it still doesn't seem like a lot.
| grahamj wrote:
| I'm reminded of the thread from the other day about
| "just" doing something.
|
| We'll just add a camera, no biggie!
|
| Still, I'm very glad they did it. Arguably the second
| most beautiful planet :)
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > A radiation hardened equivalent of a $20 FPGA can be
| something like $20,000
|
| Has anyone actually tried putting up non-rad hardened
| equipment to measure how they perform? The Mars
| helicopter wasn't RAD hardened and used off the shelf
| parts & succeeded and the Mars atmosphere is not thick
| enough to meaningfully block the amount of cosmic rays
| hitting the surface.
|
| I think NASA doesn't do a good job sometimes tolerating
| risk and then everything is treated as needing safety-
| levels of risk mitigation without considering that a
| 1/100th cost reduction will not generate as much in parts
| failures.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Yep, they do! I had some of this discussion on a thread
| talking about the Mars helicopter here that Goddard does
| a lot of radiation testing on commercial chips.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39175423#39182421
|
| Lots of the new space, and smaller satellite companies
| use a lot of commercial parts. A lot of the flight data
| has shown even better results than the radiation testing
| (possibly due to added stress of testing at higher rates
| vs low rates over longer mission duration).
|
| Generally speaking most of this is in LEO with a pretty
| low radiation environment. Whereas the area around
| Jupiter is one of the worst radiation environments in the
| solar system due to the radiation belts (like the Van
| Allen belts on steroids). This page on the Juno Radiation
| Vault says the spacecraft is exposed to an anticipated 20
| Mrads of radiation. Whereas spacecraft in LEO are exposed
| to 0.1-10 krads per year depending on the orbit.
|
| Also a fun fact, this is with Juno trying to limit
| exposure to the radiation belts as much as possible. [1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_Radiation_Vault
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft)#/medi
| a/File:...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Ok. That's a good point about the radiation belts. I
| hadn't considered that Jupiter's massive magnetosphere
| captures & concentrates a huge amount of solar energy &
| Juno is very close to it. Thanks for the additional info!
| fecal_henge wrote:
| Lots of work on this in the High Energy Physics
| community. Big experiments can design their own rad hard
| silicon, but everyone else has to test. Lots of space
| rated electronics is also qualified at far lower levels
| than we need. Upside ia that people are happy to share
| what they find:
|
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.01742.pdf
|
| https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/Main/RAD-HARD-COMP
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| > I think NASA doesn't do a good job sometimes tolerating
| risk and then everything is treated as needing safety-
| levels of risk mitigation without considering that a
| 1/100th cost reduction will not generate as much in parts
| failures.
|
| I do absolutely understand this impression of NASA. But I
| also think it gets inflated because the highest profile
| NASA missions that you hear about in the news are the
| most expensive and least risk tolerant missions. But
| there is pretty large spectrum in terms of cost caps and
| risk tolerance to NASA mission classes. I think generally
| in order of descending cost/risk tolernace it is: Human
| Spaceflight, Flagship (i.e. JWST, Mars Rovers), New
| Frontiers (Juno falls here), Discovery, Explorer, Mid-
| Explorer (MidEx), Small Explorer (SmEx), Venture.
|
| For an example in the Venture class you can look at
| something like CYGNSS. Constellation of 8 spacecraft to
| better understand dynamics of hurricanes by looking at
| ocean wind speeds. This is done by mapping doppler delay
| of reflected GPS signals off of waves in the ocean.
| Important science, super cool technology with mostly
| automotive grade parts. ~$150 million for the whole
| mission that lasted about 7 years.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > It was not included in the initial designs
|
| That's why NASA is poor and pentagon is rich.
|
| To me as a taxpayer, if there are no cool pictures, it
| doesn't exist.
|
| If they were politically shrewd, camera would be the biggest
| instrument.
|
| And the next probe that will dive into the sun would carry
| the bullet that killed Kennedy or a shot off piece from
| Trump's ear.
| slashdave wrote:
| NASA's PR department makes the Pentagon look like amateurs.
| mobeigi wrote:
| So beautiful! I love these!
| CheatModeON wrote:
| Feels like Van Gaugh has travelled to Jupiter already.
| pletnes wrote:
| Is anyone making posters I can get for christmas?
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| Ymmv but
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jupiter+juno+poster&iar=images&iax...
| --
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jupiter+poster&iax=images&ia=image...
| --
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Juno was something about radar - penetrating the cloud layers to
| see what was below.
|
| In college my son worked on the FFT engine that processed the
| radar data. He has code circling Jupiter!
| awanderingmind wrote:
| That's really cool, something to be proud of :)
| KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 wrote:
| I worked with a guy once back in the 80s who did the radar
| preamp on Pioneer Venus I believe it was. Very bright
| individual.
| latexr wrote:
| That would be a hilarious (and confusing) bumper sticker. When
| other parents say "my son is an honour student" you can smugly
| reply "yeah, but does he have code circling Jupiter?"
|
| Congratulations, by the way. I'm being (trying to be) funny but
| I genuinely think that is cool and a reason to be proud.
| generic92034 wrote:
| On the other hand, depending on their development, the
| Jovians might think that everything at all is circling
| Jupiter. :D
| virtue3 wrote:
| I have a close friend that worked on the mars rover.
|
| He uses me as a reference.
|
| As soon as they start being like "can he use the latest android
| libraries and techniques" or some crap. I just shoot back: "The
| man has code on another planet, he's more than capable of
| picking up anything"
|
| They shut up so fast lol
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| How hard is it to send something there to give us a 24/7 feed of
| the planet from a fixed angle?
| CableNinja wrote:
| Pretty difficult.
|
| Jupiters sphere of influence is full of radiation, meaning the
| sat needs a lot of shielding which makes it very heavy.
| Additionally, you need a lot of thrust to not only get to
| Jupiter, but to be able to get into a geosync orbit around a
| planet other than earth, so youre gonna need a lot of fuel. And
| finally, time... Europa Clipper just left earth, it will be 8
| years before it arrives at jupiter. The windows for launch are
| long but very spread out, so mission timing would be important
| too.
|
| And, funfacts time.. Clipper is going to europa but will be
| spending much of its time in orbit around jupiter, passing
| closely to europa every orbit. This was done to limit the
| amount of radiation the sat will get during its mission, and
| that orbit is uuuge, in order to avoid as much of the radiation
| as possible.
|
| The area of Jupiter and its moons is probably one of the most
| hostile space environments in our system, catching asteroids,
| radiation, huge planet full of gasses that would corrode you
| and your ship if you dipped in, and a huge gravity well that
| makes it difficult to leave again once youre there. Not many
| other planets in our system are as dangerous as jupiter and
| friends.
| KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 wrote:
| I was under the impression that we now know how to do low-
| fuel paths through the solar system using gravity. It's more
| a question of how long do you want to take to get where
| you're going.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| If you want to go faster, you need more fuel, and
| eventually you max out the biggest rocket available.
| Clipper is the most massive planetary probe ever-- they had
| to use falcon heavy in fully expendable mode to get it up
| there.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Yep, for reference Europa Clipper is 6,065 kg [0]. It is
| an absolutely massive interplanetary probe. It is getting
| close in size to some of the largest GEO communication
| satellites. And to get it out to Jupiter they definitely
| need some of the gravity assist trajectories.
|
| On the opposite end of the spectrum, New Horizons was
| only 478 kg [1] and still holds the record for the
| fastest thing ever launched from Earth. It also did a
| gravity assist flyby around Jupiter and it still took 9
| years to get to Pluto.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Horizons
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Cassini[1] was quite massive too at launch, at 5712 kg.
| Though to be fair, 320 kg was due to the Huygens[2] probe
| it carried with it.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)
| adolph wrote:
| Yes, this specific specific duration has to do with the
| choice of launch vehicle. (No shade for any particular
| program as all have different tradeoffs and I'm gratified
| to see the probe successfully on its way.)
|
| _The SLS option would have entailed a direct trajectory to
| Jupiter taking less than three years. ... The move to
| Falcon Heavy saved an estimated US$2 billion in launch
| costs alone. NASA was not sure an SLS would be available
| for the mission since the Artemis program would use SLS
| rockets extensively, and the SLS 's use of solid rocket
| boosters (SRBs) generates more vibrations in the payload
| than a launcher that does not use SRBs._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Clipper
| grahamj wrote:
| You need line of sight to talk to it and I'm pretty sure the
| sun is going to be in the way sometimes.
| openrisk wrote:
| Alien feel (and even unsettling at times).
|
| I guess we have grown used to this by now, but from the Moon
| landing pictures, to the Mars rovers and the various asteroid and
| planetary missions the objects of the Solar system are now vivid,
| complex and above all, "real" places.
| danparsonson wrote:
| I know what you mean - looking at planetary close-up images, I
| sometimes involuntarily get the feeling of what it would be
| like to be out there with the probe, lonely and desolate and
| millions of miles from home....
| kulahan wrote:
| The photos of Pluto from the New Horizons mission are
| stunningly beautiful. Who knew you could fall in love with a
| frozen rock?
| ned99 wrote:
| Breathtaking! Just imagine, a century from now, maybe later or
| sooner, we could visit planets like Jupiter, that once, we could
| only look at them from the photo. I hope the humanity lives on,
| and strives forward in engineering.
| youtubeuser wrote:
| Maybe silly question, but why are the pictures cropped?
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Not a silly question. I don't think the images are actually
| cropped. JunoCam is described as a "push broom" imager [0]. The
| camera takes pictures as the spacecraft turns. So it's more
| like you are looking at a stitched together panorama and not a
| cropped version of a larger image.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JunoCam#Design
| procufly wrote:
| The image quality improvement is unbelievable on these photos!
| uhtred wrote:
| A big beautiful ball of gas floating around in empty space for
| absolutely no reason whatsoever!
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(page generated 2024-11-06 23:00 UTC)