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Juno captured this color portrait of the edge of Jupiter and two of the gas giant’s largest moons — Io and Europa — as it performed its eighth flyby of the planet.
This image of Jupiter, Io and Europa was taken by NASA’s Juno spacecraft on September 1, 2017 at 6:14 p.m. EDT (3:14 p.m. PDT), and then processed by citizen scientist Roman Tkachenko. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SwRI / MSSS / Roman Tkachenko.
Juno launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived in orbit around Jupiter, the largest planet in our Solar System, on July 4, 2016.
The spacecraft is in a polar orbit around Jupiter, and the majority of each orbit is spent well away from the planet.
But, once every 53 days, its trajectory approaches the gas giant from above its north pole, where it begins a 2-hr transit — from pole to pole — flying north to south.
During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of the planet and studying its auroras to learn more about its origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
On September 1, 2017, at 5:49 p.m. EDT (2:49 p.m. PDT), the probe successfully made its eighth flyby of Jupiter.
The newly released image was taken just 25 minutes after Juno’s closest approach to the planet.
When the image was made, the spacecraft was about 17,098 miles (27,516 km) from Jupiter’s cloud tops at a latitude of minus 49.372 degrees.
Closer to the planet, Io can be seen at an altitude of 298,880 miles (481,000 km).
In the distance (to the left), another one of Jupiter’s Galilean moons, Europa, is visible at an altitude of 453,601 miles (730,000 km).
