05/28/2018 – Ephemeris – NASA’s Juno spacecraft takes deep dives at Jupiter

Ephemeris for Memorial Day, Monday, May 28th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 15 minutes, setting at 9:17, and it will rise tomorrow at 6:02. The Moon, 1 day before full, will set at 6:24 tomorrow morning.

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has made 11 close passes of Jupiter since being inserted into Jovian orbit in July 2016. It has a highly elliptical orbit. It comes in over the north pole, passes only 2,000 miles over the cloud tops at the equator and heads out over the south pole, avoiding the most intense parts of Jupiter’s radiation belts. The high latitude and polar clouds appear more chaotic than expected. We can’t see these very well from the Earth. The magnetic field is much stronger and lumpier than thought before. A very much improved and complex picture of our largest planet is emerging, as we expected. The mission isn’t over and years of analysis are ahead to begin to more fully understand the solar system’s greatest planet.

The times given are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan. They may be different for your location.

Addenda

Chaotic storms at Jovian high latitudes. Credit NASA/JUNO

Jupiter’s North Pole in the infrared. 8 cyclones surrounding a 9th at the pole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

Jupiter’s South Pole in the infrared. 5 cyclones surrounding a 6th at the pole. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/ASI/INAF/JIRAM

Alan Bean

Astronaut Alan Bean, 4th person to walk on the Moon with Apollo 12 passed away this weekend.  He also commanded the second Skylab mission and retired to become an artist, a painter of his adventures on the Moon and in space.  Of the twelve men who walked on the Moon, only four survive.