Voting Round :

PJ7 ENCOUNTER

CLOSED : 2017-07-03 17:00:00
Perijove on : 2017-07-11 01:55 UT
About This Round
In this perijove pass the Juno spacecraft will fly over the Great Red Spot (GRS), a storm that has been churning for centuries. We will set aside enough data volume for a close image directly over this storm. The rest is up to you! We think that the atmosphere north and south of the Great Red Spot is very interesting also, so we expect lots of advocacy for those points of interest. We will take some standard images of the north and south poles, but we will do only minimal time-lapse imaging, to conserve data volume for the GRS and its environs. Data volume is somewhat limited on this perijove pass because the spacecraft will be in an orientation that is favorable for Juno's microwave radiometer to study the GRS. In this orientation we don't have a real-time downlink connection to earth, so the number of images we can take is limited by the JunoCam buffer size.
Perijove Predict Map
About Perijove Predict Maps

Every perijove pass we have the challenge of predicting where Points of Interest will be as the different zones of the planet have different wind velocities. This map shows our effort to rotate the latitudinal zones with their different wind speeds to predict what will be under the Juno groundtrack.

Winner Selection
A little more information: We "target" the JunoCam images based solely on timing. The timing of an image is set to acquire a given latitude. Ordinarily we accept that drift rates of storms are not well-known, and we may or may not actually image a specific feature for that reason. In this case the position of the GRS is extremely well-known, and latest predicts show that we will pass directly over the center. That means that we actually will not image the POI's to the east and west of the GRS, even though they have been included in the "selected" list due to being at ~the same latitude.

Late Update: We needed to adjust the timing of the Great Red Spot images a little bit, and that meant that we lost the image of POI: "End of the White Highway". This is not unusual - we make adjustments as our knowledge of the spacecraft trajectory improves. We were able to add "Juno Eye" to use the freed-up data volume.
Bold circles show the final selected targets.

The focus on this pass is the Great Red Spot (GRS). We will be taking images of the northern edge, the GRS itself, and the view from the south. These three images will include the POIs “The Great Red Spot”, “Within the wake of the Great Red Spot”, “Edge of Great Red Spot”, “Wake”, “Lower Great Red Spot Atmospheric Flow”, and “Fractured Boundary”. Not surprisingly these targets got the most votes. As in the past we were able to combine some other targets. The other high vote-getters we were able to fit into the available data volume are: “Flower Moon” + “Dark Clouds”; “White Spot B”; “Complex High Contrast”; “Hot Spot Tail” + “Hot Spot”; “Mortyland” + “Edge of the White Highway”; and “Tan Seashore”.

Candidate Points of Interest

Voting has closed for this round. View results in the Candidates list below. Be sure to keep an eye on the Processing Gallery for images of POIs/Campaigns selected during this round of voting taken by the JunoCam!
Cylindrical map generated from data submitted via the JunoCam Planning section.

Round Discussion

General discussion about this round.

7 Comments

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  1. comment by Bjorn_Jonsson on 2017-07-03 12:41 UT

    It was rather difficult to vote this time - of course extensive coverage of the GRS is desired but there are also lots of additional interesting features. I'd really have needed five votes ;-).

    Hopefully complete longitudinal and latitudinal coverage of the GRS and also its periphery is possible because the GRS periphery is also very interesting. Thunderheads and turbulent features have been observed by earlier spacecraft in the north and northwest periphery. Elongated whitish clouds casting shadows were also imaged by the Voyager spacecraft in the GRS northeast periphery where wind speeds are very high.

  2. comment by van Riebeeck-68 on 2017-07-02 22:30 UT

    I'm so glad the flybys are giving us an early opportunity to look at the GRS. Let's hope tons of information comes from this flyby.

    I would like to make a different request for the team to consider. The discovery that Jupiter's gravity is "knobby" with varying intensities and forms is fascinating. I suggest a focused effort delving into the large, was it describes as "mountain", of higher concentrated gravity. Put all your instruments on it. Dig deep beneath the cloud cover and within. What's causing this? Is it a fast moving whirlpool within a molten core? Is it an altogether new and unimagined gravity engine?

    I vote for spending time both in orbit and in the office exploring this puzzling phenomenon.

    Thanks for the opportunity to have a voice.

  3. comment by Candy on 2017-07-01 17:22 UT
    JUNO SPECIALIST

    What's not to love about the Great Red Spot, but I think some of the most spectacular images of Jupiter's atmosphere have come from the northern mid-latitudes. I'm casting my vote for two of those POI's. Also, I'd like to see what the tiny thunderstorms in the South Tropical Zone are doing.

  4. comment by Maquet-80 on 2017-06-30 12:43 UT

    In order to obtain a full latitudinal coverage of the GRS and adjacent regions, we should take at least one image near the northern and one image near the southern edge of the GRS, better a set of five RGB images. We would see the GRS from different angles, and we would be able to study the turbulence north and south of the GRS. I'd also expect, that only images from north and south of the GRS will be able to cover most of its longitudinal extent.

    In addition, a sequence of images near the GRS would provide the raw material for a great and unprecedented fly-over movie.

    That said, there are several other interesting or potentially interesting targets to consider. Besides for an adjacent region of the GRS, I voted for the two polar-most POIs, since I hope, that we'll get some additional polar and subpolar images for a long-term study, and more close-ups of those incredibly turbulent FFR zones near the poles.

  5. comment by Maquet-84 on 2017-06-29 17:30 UT

    A generic request for all future passes: Please include the methane filter (in combination with other filters) and target hot spots.

    • comment by Philosophia-47 on 2017-06-27 00:41 UT

      I'd like to offer the following recommendations for targets in addition to the centre of the GRS – and I hope there will be enough data capacity to image all of them! In no particular order:

      1. N. edge of GRS (POI “Spot turbulence”)

      2. S. edge of GRS (POI “Lower GRS atmospheric flow”)

      3. White spot b in NEBn (a new anticyclonic oval) (POI: “White spot b”)

      4. NN-LRS-1 (a long-lived anticyclonic oval) (POI: “White tempest”)

      5. NEBs edge (possible dark formation) (POI: “Hotspot”)

      More detailed explanation of these recommendations is on our BAA Jupiter Section web site at: https://britastro.org/node/10610

      --along with a predictive map, also shown below.

      --John Rogers.