Jupiter’s South Polar Region

Jupiter’s South Polar Region This image was created from three images taken from the JunoCam camera on the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter on an unique circumpolar orbit giving the first ever views of Jupiter’s polar regions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_(spacecraft).

The camera is a “push-broom” type imager, generating an image as the spacecraft turns moving the sensor in sweeping motion over the observation area. It has a field of view of 58 degrees and can never get the whole planet in view although it come closest to doing this when it passes over the polar regions at a distance of 100,000km.  At its closest approaches JunoCam could achieve 15 km/pixel resolution from 4300 km, while Hubble has taken images of up to 119 km/pixel from 600 million km. The camera uses a Kodak image sensor, the KODAK KAI-2020, capable of color imaging at 1600 x 1200 pixels: less than 2 megapixels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JunoCam

This image  shows the entire south polar region for the first time ever.  Each image was taken during three different orbits around the planet called Perijove’s, #1, #3, #4 from a distance of 100,000km. Combining the images was difficult as they were taken month’s apart with very little overlap between each image. Matching features was a challenge. The polar region is quite different than the familiar banded regions we have seen previously at the temperate latitudes. At the center there are 6 cyclones that seem to persist and are each about the size of the Earth.