Video of PJ43 Io encounter expectation from Volcanopele, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsEKPbXTJlU

It will definitely be interesting to see, as the encounters happen, at what resolution will a surface change become obvious. Unfortunately, the one that I KNOW has to be there (Chalybes) is on the night side for these encounters (it does pass through the SRU FOV during the PJ57 encounter). Maybe there will be something around East Girru and Volund?

Io images PJ43_02...PJ43_09 acquired on 2022-07-05 4:22 to 5:33 UTC from distances of 86132 to 107584 km.
(Preliminary processing. Lot of radiation hits.)
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Some initial images of Jupiter for PJ43



Jupiter - PJ43-25


Jupiter - PJ43-31


Jupiter - PJ43-29


Jupiter - PJ43-35 - Detail


Jupiter - PJ43-41 - Detail

This is a montage of Io images 2 to 9:

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The images are enlarged by a factor of 5 relative to the original data. The color balance is preliminary. Hopefully this is not very far from Io's real color but Io's color is a notoriously complicated subject. The viewing geometry for the first and last image is shown using computer generated images based on a Voyager/Galileo map of Io.

I guess I might as well throw in my versions of the Io data:

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Reprojected to 5x the original resolution. Map projection is point perspective.

No plumes that I could see, though I'm not terribly surprised. a surface change at Chors Patera (and a bit to its north). Vivasvant is darker compared to its appearance in the basemap, but that change started in the Galileo era. The change at Dazhbog also dates from 2001.

Color looks good to me. Similar to my expectations based on the channel manipulation I did with Galileo data based on some work Bjorn did.

This is image PJ43_36 in approximately true color/contrast and enhanced versions:

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The processing of the enhanced image is partially experimental. A large part of the original image data is rather dark and noisy. This is especially true for the blue channel; the green channel is better but nevertheless somewhat noisy. There is relatively little noise in the red channel. Compression artifacts are also apparent and (as discussed elsewhere) mainly show up as uniform areas, especially in dark areas in the original image data. Like the noise they are mainly present in the blue channel and to a lesser extent in the green channel. Because of this I decided to create a new blue channel image by combining low frequency information from the original blue image with high frequency information from the green channel. I also created a new green image by taking low frequency information from the original green image and high frequency information from the red channel. This was rather successful and largely eliminated the aforementioned uniform areas and also reduced the noise.

What I did can probably be improved, for example I suspect the 'weight' of the high frequency data is too high, at least in the new blue image (in other words, very small scale features have too high contrast relative to surrounding areas). Also the weight should possibly be a function of image brightness. One possible way to improve the new blue and green images may be to use some of the few lossless JunoCam images as 'ground truth'.

This is a comparison (animated gif) of contrast stretched versions of a part of the original and 'new' blue channel image. This is enlarged by a factor of 2:

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And the green one:

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A big visual improvement but whether some of the details visible in the new image versions really would be visible in real images with lossless compression is the big question.

PJ43 Northern Circumpolar Cyclones 3-frame Animation spanning 8 minutes
Exaggerated Color/Contrast

Altitude range: 31743.2 to 20314.8 km
Image Data acquired: 2022-07-05T08:49 to 2022-07-05T08:57:52
Uses: JNCE_2022186_43C00029_V01,JNCE_2022186_43C00031_V01,JNCE_2022186_43C00033_V01
Render Size: 1224, 1020

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That animation was so subtle.

True. But can't expect too much change over 8 minutes. Though since the rotating vortices are 3-4000km across,
if we guestimate the rotation to be at least 2º over the 8 minutes, that puts the movement at >375km/h.

Would be awesome if there was a space based observatory continuously looking at the clouds. It could be called the Jupiter Weather Station Telescope.

ISTR that this was one of the objectives of Galileo before the X-band antenna failed. In something I read about the mission there was a quote from a team member along the lines of "we're going to be able to take movies of Jupiter's clouds."

Alas ...

Unfortunately a synchronous orbit (which would be the best way to do it, like Earth observing satellites do) is right between the inner irregular moons. It would be rather difficult to both reach (delta-v) and remain functional for a long period in the radiation environment.

Prominent structure appearing in PJ43_34 and PJ43_3 rended as a cross-eye stereoscopic pair.
Image pair shows some disparity based depth effect.
Color/contrast are exaggerated.

PJ43_34 image data acquired 2022-07-05T09:00 from altitude 16479.9 km
PJ43_36 image data acquired 2022-07-05T09:05 from altitude 11374.4 km

Both images are rendered from position of PJ43_35 using point perspective with 40º FOV at 4k-by-4k resolution.

Full resolution PNG version available at https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing?id=13505

Click to view attachment

Another subtle animation...
PJ43 Southern Cloud Movements Animation Spanning 48 minutes
Rendering: Orthographic centered on South Pole
Greyscale (mean of exaggerated red and green channels)
Image data acquired: 2022-07-05T11:29 to 2022-07-05T12:17
Altitude range: 204727.5 to 274852.7 km

3 Frame animation of PJ43_72, PJ43_75, PJ43_80
Resolution: 1495x1495
Click to view attachment

What sort of "relief" are we looking at here? Is there any vertical exaggeration applied to the stereo image (doubt it)? What is the scale of the base image, anyway? I just realized that I've been looking at these Juno images without having an idea of how big this is, other than BIG.

--Bill

Jupiter JunoCam PJ43_31 North Pole image with night-side filled in by @OpenAI #Dalle2 via prompt
"Upper left half of image appears similar to lower right half of image and there is no noticeable diagonal discontinuity."
Upper left image is is original with night-side masked out. Other three images generated by the AI.
Click to view attachment

@Brian Swift

I've always been curious what their image set list looks like. Your #2 and #4 frames look pretty remarkable and probably would largely pass unnoticed at a cursory glance.

This is just two images, so no artificial vertical exaggeration. The angle between the two views is about 57º.

As for big-ness:
The circular structure in the lower-3rd right-3rd of image about 2500km across.
If you imagine the central structure as being T shaped, it is about 5500km across the top and 7000km tall.
The bright cloud patch (horizontally centered, lower 3rd of image, left of circular structure), is about 1300km long by 500km wide.

There are features with subtle depth visible in that stereo view - one trick to make it easier to see subtle depth is to view cross-eyed and swap L and R frames repeatedly. It's easier to see features pop a bit forwards and back each time you swap than features that are fixed either forwards or back.

Considering the frames are separated by only 5 minutes I guess differences between the two frames are dominated by the change in perspective, rather than by distortions due to differential wind across the frames.

I've visualized these features as essentially "flat against" the top of the atmosphere-sphere. But this stereopair has a subtle depth visible. The small, white clouds are cumulus convecting high in the atmosphere with.the dark cyclonic (anticyclonic?) swirls driving deep into the atmospheric column. Certainly that has an altitude, a depth and relief.

Here's Brian's work presented as a Red-Blue anaglyph. The feature that perhaps jumps out most to me is the deep "trench" to the left of the circular swirl in the lower right part of the image.

There's certainly some relief here. There's also a bit of lateral movement due to winds, I think. Zooming in and looking at different scales, this could take a while to explore.

Amateur astronomers have noticed an increase in activity in the Great Red Spot this week (1 August 22).
When will Juno next get the chance to view the GRS?

--Bill

Next Perijove is 8/17, however predicting visibility of GRS is above my pay grade.

If you know the System III longitude of the GRS at a given time, its canonical SIII drift rate is +0.308 degrees/day.

A quick skim of the amateur images on missionjuno shows that the GRS was at about 300 degrees system III on 7/24/2022.

So I think the GRS will not be visible on the outbound leg of this month's PJ, which covers 130W to 200W, about.

If I did all that right.

Thanks Brian and Mike. We'll keep an eye on it from this side of the tracks.

--Bill

Looking at amateur pictures from this week, it seems that the GRS is surrounded (I would have said "encircled" but it's more of an ellipse) by a bit more of a wide band of pale clouds than usual. Is that the unusual activity? Otherwise, I don't see anything that looks out of the ordinary.

That is the activity, and it's enough to get the Jupiter Watchers excited. I look at it as a high layer of white clouds overlying the reddish deeper cyclonic area of the GRS. Certainly not a death-nell, but I'd be interested to view it closer.

So PJ44 did drop into the GRS:
http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...st&p=258129

StargazeInWonder, can you post the anaglyph image to the https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu site, or give the the OK and I'll post it.
Thanks.

Europlanet Science Congress presentation "Long-Baseline Observations with JunoCam",
quantitative analysis of cloud elevation based on stereoscopic images.

Abstract: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPS...C2022-1124.html
PowerPoint Slides (Display file button on page): https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPS...n/EPSC2022-1124
Coverage at phys.org : https://phys.org/news/2022-09-3d-junocam-re...ed-cupcake.html
Space.com getting 95K+ views of Gerald's animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqCNGf7pM9w

Gerald, will video of session be posted?

That is exactly what I was referring to when I discussed the appearance of relief in pairs of Juno images. Any two images of a point taken along a flight path create a stereo pair, and can be viewed in stereo.

Sure, subject to the caveats that every Junocam "image" is a sequence of framelets taken at slightly different times from slightly different locations, the clouds themselves are moving dynamically, and the orientation of epipolar lines is complex and variable across the FOV. See Gerald's slides for a taste of all the complexities involved and all the work left to do.

I'm don't think it's happening here, but I've seen lots of "stereo" images where there was some factor that wasn't considered, and people were just deluding themselves into seeing relief.

It may well be that these Junocam images are giving the impression of stereo relief, but in reality we are not looking a 2D surface. There has to be high clouds grading down to low clouds.

--Bill

I think mcaplinger may have been referring to shape from shade, not Gerald's work.

No, but I don't know what Bill was talking about. Sure, one would expect some relief from clouds, and sure, stereo could see that in theory.

Don't even get me started about shape from shading.

Looks like no-one has posted this lovely JIRAM image yet, so here it is for completeness. It would be great to have IDs for the various volcanoes- in particular, what's the extended feature right on the limb at 10:30 o'clock?

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Release here.

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Merged that image with a Voyager/Galileo basemap. The extended hotspot at 10:30 is Loki on the limb

I should also post some of my PJ41 products here as well…

I knew you'd have the answer, VP! Thanks. Makes sense that it's Loki- not many volcanoes would have the power to glow so brightly at that emission angle.

John