Using cameras designed for navigation, scientists count ‘fireflies’ to determine the amount of radiation the spacecraft receives during each orbit of Jupiter.
This view of Jupiter was captured by the Juno Cam instrument aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft during the mission’s 62nd close flyby of the giant planet on June 13. Citizen scientist Jackie Branc made the image using raw Juno Cam data.Using data from the Advanced Stellar Compass star tracker cameras aboard NASA’s Juno , this graphic shows the mission’s model for radiation intensity at different points in the spacecraft’s orbit around Jupiter .
Both the ASC and SRU are low-light cameras designed to assist with deep-space navigation. These types of instruments are on almost all spacecraft. But to get them to operate as radiation detectors, Juno’s science team had to look at the cameras in a whole new light. “Every quarter-second, the ASC takes an image of the stars,” said Juno scientist John Leif Jørgensen of the Technical University of Denmark. “Very energetic electrons that penetrate its shielding leave a telltale signature in our images that looks like the trail of a firefly. The instrument is programmed to count the number of these fireflies, giving us an accurate calculation of the amount of radiation.
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