Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/07/13/juno-probe-sends-first-jupiter.html
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Focus!
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…the Great Red Spot…may not be as great as it once was.
It was never that great, really. People just bought the hype.
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Yup, that’s a Jupiter.
so, apparently the way Juno works is that it’s in a highly elliptical orbit.
In every 14 day orbit, it’ll spend most of it’s time relatively far from jupiter (and, I suppose the worst of the magnetic fields). For two days, it’ll be close enough to jupiter to get interesting images on Junocam. And for two hours, it’ll be between 1.06-1.12 Juno radii-- 4000 to 8000 kilometers from Jupiter’s center.
details when Junocam will be active, and when it will be close enough to resolve more detail than earthbound amateur telescopes. (Juno has other instruments, of course, but Junocam is specifically designed to awe the public.)
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Cloud tops, I think. 8000 km from Jupiter’s center is well within the planet!
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Though it will be interesting to find out if Jupiter’s center is rocky, or chewy, delicious nougat. 
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Definitely. The radius of jupiter is 69,911 km. 1.06 jupiter radii is 69,911 km + 4194 km. So if apojove is 39 radii, that’s 2.7 million kilometers.
There’s a junocam simulation here.
Obviously, the resolution is a bit lacking-- but it’s merely a simulation.
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It isn’t the first Jupiter pic it’s sent back, but the first since it entered orbit. This image was taken at 6.8 million miles on June 21st, and this one at 3.3 million miles on the 29th.
Also, we yet again have a very sophisticated thing orbiting another planet and studying it. Yay us.
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I’m amazed, still, that it arrived one second later than scheduled. That blew me away.
It will be interesting to see what more will be discovered.
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