Juno's Perijove-15 Jupiter Flyby, Reconstructed in 125-Fold Time-Lapse

2018-09-28 16:37 UT
Credit : NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / SPICE / Gerald Eichstädt © cc by
Submitted By : Maquet-80
Mission Phase : PERIJOVE 15

Early on September 07, 2018, UTC, NASA's Juno probe successfully performed her Perijove-15 Jupiter flyby.

Like during most of the recent Jupiter flybys, good contact to Earth and incremented storage allowed taking close-up images of good quality.

The movie is a reconstruction of the 112 minutes between 2018-09-07T00:30:00.000 and 2018-09-07T02:22:00.000 in 125-fold time-lapse.

It is based on 25 of the JunoCam images taken, and on spacecraft trajectory data provided via SPICE kernel files.

In steps of five real-time seconds, one still images of the movie has been rendered from at least one suitable raw image. This resulted in short scenes, usually of a few seconds.

Playing with 25 images per second results in 125-fold time-lapse.

Resulting overlapping scenes have been blended using the ffmpeg tool.

In natural colors, Jupiter looks pretty pale. Therefore, the still images are approximately illumination-adusted, i.e. almost flattened, and consecutively gamma-stretched to the 4th power of radiometric values, in order to enhance contrast and color.

The movie starts with a reconstructed in-bound sequence approaching Jupiter from north on its night side. Then the orbit approaches Jupiter down to an altitude of about 3,500 km near 16.6 degrees northern latitude.

JunoCam looked towards Jupiter's limb during close flyby.

This is followed by a transition into the outbound orbit, during which Jupiter's south polar region comes into the field of view.

JunoCam was built and is operated by Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego / California / USA.

Many people at NASA, JPL, SwRI, and elsewhere have been, are, and will be required to plan and operate the Juno mission.