A model of the Juno spacecraft. Image via NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
It has been just over two weeks since it entered Jupiter’s orbit and the Juno spacecraft has released its first data dump of 1,300 images which it encourages the public to download and use.
Juno has been one of the most interesting space endeavours in recent years with its mission to orbit the giant gas planet Jupiter and learn more about how the planet formed and evolved over billions of years.
While it entered the planet’s orbit on 4 July, the first video clip from Juno as it made its approach emerged between 12 and 29 June as the planet’s moon Callisto made a complete orbit.
Jupiter’s other moons, too, were captured by Juno’s camera making multiple orbits including Io, Europa and Ganymede, all from a distance of between 10m and 3m km from Jupiter.
For those who have a keen interest in photo editing and movie making, NASA has released all of the images obtained during this period. The entire catalogue of 1,300 files is now available for free as part of a major data dump.
“You will find links to view and download the movie, the individual still frames, and other useful information for the purpose of processing these images on your own,” the announcement said. “We hope that you will enjoy creating your own product!”
Not for your average enthusiast
To get a sense of how much information has been captured here, NASA said it split the images into five zip files, each of which total around 500MB in size.
To those without photo-editing software: beware. The images are by no means a finished product showing us the sights from the original reveal video. Rather, these are very raw images for the dedicated astronomy photographers out there.
Thankfully, some such photographers have trawled through the data to create fantastic images that have been edited to show Juno’s approach in all its glory.
A multi-frame image composed by Imgur user cain456
The next major reveal by Juno is expected sometime this September following the spacecraft’s reawakening of scientific instruments on 27 August within Jupiter’s orbit.
