The Planet Jupiter Is An Enormous Work Of Art!
Thanks to NASA and some very dedicated “citizen scientists”, we have some amazing views of the fifth planet in out solar system, which is also by far the largest!
Jupiter is approximately 89,000 miles wide at its equator – so large that all of the other planets in the solar system could fit inside it. Talk about big!
Jupiter’s Ready For Its Closeup!
Now, some incredible images and video have been released showing the plant up close!
According to a great article in The Huffington Post:
“After orbiting Jupiter for a little more than a year and a half, NASA’s Juno spacecraft recently finished its 10th trip around the massive planet. Now the space agency is sharing some of the photos Juno snapped that were edited by citizen scientists.”
the article goes on to note:
“The image was taken on Dec. 16, 2017 from nearly 8,300 miles above Jupiter’s clouds, and processed, or edited, by Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran. NASA routinely releases batches of photos taken by the Juno probe for the public to process.”
Bravo to Eichstadt and Doran for this incredible work to bring this NASA material to life!
Here is a moving video of the entire sequence – simply stunning:
Gerald Eichstädt Published this video on YouTube on Dec 25, 2017 – here is his explainer:
“On December 16, 2017, NASA’s Juno probe successfully performed her Perijove-10 Jupiter flyby.
Good contact to Earth and incremented storage allowed taking very close-up images of good quality.
The movie is a reconstruction of the period of time between 2017-12-16T16:35:00.000 and 2017-12-16T19:25:00.000 in 125-fold time-lapse.
It is based on 20 of the JunoCam images taken, and on spacecraft trajectory data provided via SPICE kernel files.”
He goes on to add:
“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 between 3,000 and 4,000 km near the equator.
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.
The rendition is preliminary. A revised version might be provided in the first quarter of 2018.
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.
Credit: NASA / JPL / SwRI / MSSS / SPICE / Gerald Eichstädt”
Bravo to NASA Eichstädt and everyone else involved as the credit notes – amazing stuff to share!
Let’s admit that none of us will ever go into outer space, but thanks to some incredible travel companies, we can at least stare out and see things like this:
Camping Under The “Northern Lights!”
Yes, there is a company that sets you up in a private igloo so you can watch the northern lights at their most magical – I could stare at this all night…see more outer space adventures like this here:
And bravo to everyone behind these incredible images from Jupiter!
Categories: Art, Books / Media, documentary films, Exotic Travel, Technology, Travel, Travel Adventures, Travel Memoir, Uncategorized
Impressive.
At least the Northern Lights trip is something attainable. Jupiter looks amazing in these shots, but the sheer distances involved in space travel tend to blow my mind!
Best wishes, Pete.
Pete, I agree – when I hear stories of going to Mars, I laugh – it would take years and years and for what? It’s empty!
Beautiful!! I saw Jupiter once through a high powered telescope and was really impressed. But this close up is amazing! thanks for sharing!
How awesome John. Put that night in an igloo under the Northern Lights on my bucket list.
Agree – what an experience!