JunoCam Out Of The Box

 JunoCam, the wide-angle visible light imager of NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter delivers excellent close-up images of Jupiter's cloud tops. Juno's mission on its elliptical, and precessing polar orbit was initially anticipated to end before crossing Europa's orbit. Any data taken from the Europa flyby onwards has come from a mission extension with opportunistic and serendipitous observations. Besides unprecedented close-up views of Jupiter's north polar region in the visible light spectrum, JunoCam was able to take close-up image sequences of Io, including specular reflection from the glassy surface of some of its calderas. A very subtle streak of light through Io observed after a violent eruption of one of its volcanoes suggests the demand for follow-up observations by other instruments such as JWST, in order to find out whether this is simply an instrument artefact, or whether we see Io inducing an arc of material escaping its Hill sphere with possible implications for a steady supply of material to Europa. While JunoCam was intended to take close-up images of Jupiter's dayside, it transitioned to taking close-up images of Jupiter's night side. Due to JunoCam's design using time-delayed integration, it can take sharp images despite the camera being statically attached to the rotating spacecraft. This technology, together with thorough image cleaning, was successfully applied to capture lightning and an auroral arc. Juno's precessing polar orbit brings the spacecraft closer to Jupiter's most intense radiation belt. Charged particles, mostly energetic electrons, cause visible energetic particle hits on the CCD, and they degrade the detector. While this creates challenges for processing pretty images, and even for instrument health, it can also be used to retrieve qualitative data on charged particle flux and total dose.