2016-17, Report no.7: Preview of Juno’s perijove-5

By John Rogers

Juno’s perijove-5 will be on 2017 March 27. Attached is a predictive map, showing how I expect the planet to look. Regions on or very near the Juno track will be visible to JunoCam. To determine which targets will be imaged, everyone is invited to vote (from March 15-20) at: https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam

So please go there and vote for your favoured 3 'Points of Interest' (POIs).

I would like to make two top recommendations:

1) The STB Spectre [POI: ‘STB Spectre’]. This ghostly bluish streak is a long-lived cyclonic circulation which is one of the few structures perceptible in these whitened latitudes where the South Temperate Belt would normally be. The dark spot at the south-west end is where incoming small dark spots perform a U-turn. It has never been seen close up and it should be perfectly positioned at PJ-5. A methane-band image might also be worthwhile. (The most recent hi-res images of it are posted below.)

2) The NTB(S) – the new orange belt [POI: ‘The Big Red Stripe v2’]. Since the great outbreak initiated the revival of this belt last autumn, we have a unique opportunity to monitor its progress. JunoCam already got fine images at PJ-3 and PJ-4; let’s continue the series to see how the belt is changing (Latitude +22.7 centric, +25.5 graphic).

Of course the polar regions are also well worth targetting again.