MEDIA GALLERY :

In the media gallery below you'll find the first images being sent directly from the Juno spacecraft. Juno is carrying a camera, called JunoCam, to Jupiter to acquire the best pictures ever taken of Jupiter’s polar regions.  But it has another purpose – to involve the world in planning and processing images, carrying out steps a science team would ordinarily do.  The JunoCam team has planned the earth flyby images, but when we get to Jupiter we will rely on the public’s help to operate the camera.  

How do you take a picture when your spacecraft is spinning?  Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) took on this challenge for the Juno project.  JunoCam has a “push-frame” design, like many MSSS cameras, that acquires the image a strip at a time as the spacecraft spins and the earth passes through the field of view.

The camera has 4 filters:  red, green, blue and near-infrared.  We get red, green and blue strips on one spacecraft rotation (the spacecraft rotation rate is 2 revolutions per minute, or 2 rpm), and the near-infrared strips on the second rotation.  

To get the final image product the strips must be stitched together and the colors lined up.   Come back on October 10th and you can see each step of the process here in our image gallery.

To learn more about how to process the imagery on your own visit the MSSS website. 

Submit your images to Juno_outreach@jpl.nasa.gov to be featured right here on the Mission Juno website!