Jovian synchrotron radiation multi-zonal parametric model: an update from Juno MWR observations

The Microwave Radiometer (MWR), Juno’s remote-sensing experiment, captures the thermal and non-thermal radiation emitted by the atmosphere and the magnetosphere, which is present in the Jovian orbital environment. Other scientific instruments on the spacecraft record the signatures of space-charged particles and the planet’s magnetic field. To retrieve the atmospheric composition values from MWR’s low-frequency radiative observation, the contributions from three existing emission sources (the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the planet, and synchrotron radiation belts) must be untangled numerically. The multi-parameter, multi-zonal model of Levin et al. (2001) for synchrotron emission employs an empirical electron-energy distribution. Initially, this distribution has been adjusted exclusively from Very Large Array (VLA) observations made from Earth before the Juno mission.  This is a report on the recent model update based on a subset of MWR in-situ data. The approaches considered, challenges confronted, and the latest results are discussed here.