Annales Geophysicae· 2026Q2
JUICE-JANUS observations of Earth in preparation for the JANUS investigation of Jupiter's atmosphere
- 3citations
- Q2SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
The JUICE mission's JANUS camera captured detailed images of Earth during a flyby, revealing atmospheric phenomena like airglow, fires, city lights, and cloud patterns, which serve as analogs for future Jupiter observations.
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Key points
- JANUS camera on JUICE mission observed Earth during August-September 2024 flybys.
- Close-approach images revealed night-side airglow, fires, city lights, and meteor candidates.
- Day-side images showed crepuscular rays, gravity waves, sun glint, storms, and cloud systems.
- Spectral trends of Earth's ocean and clouds were compared to EnMAP and PRISMA satellite data.
- Observations serve as analogs for future JANUS investigations of Jupiter's atmosphere.
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Abstract
Abstract. JANUS (Jovis, Amorum ac Natorum Undique Scrutator), the high-resolution camera on the JUICE mission (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer), obtained observations of the Earth during and short-after a Lunar and Earth Gravitational Assist maneuver (LEGA) that was run on August 19–20, 2024. We report on the observations of the Earth that were acquired on August 20, 2024 at a closest approach to the surface of 8,408 km, and on September 9, 2024 at a distance of 564,300 km. The close approach observations covered a narrow strip of the Earth, starting in the night-side of the planet and moving over the terminator and day-side. The later observation provided a low spatial resolution portrait of the Earth and the Moon. Here we examine JANUS observations of the Earth as an example of the different science topics that will be addressed in future observations of Jupiter's atmosphere. The Earth night-side images show atmospheric airglow, clouds illuminated by a full Moon, fires in rural areas, lights over the ocean from maritime traffic, city lights, no firm detections of lightning, and two meteor candidates compatible with meteoroids of 1–30 g entering Earth's atmosphere. The day-side images show crepuscular rays under extreme incidence angles, atmospheric gravity waves on elevated cirrus, sun glint on multi-filter images of the tropical Western Pacific, convective storms, internal waves in the ocean and multiple cloud systems at a variety of spatial resolutions. Some images acquired with the panchromatic filter showed islands such as Luzon and the Big Island of Hawaii. We compare spectral trends of the ocean and various cloud systems extracted from JANUS multi-spectral images with spectra from the EnMAP and PRISMA satellites. JANUS images acquired on September 9, 2024 allow to form a multi-spectral view of the Earth at low spatial resolution. The data confirm the expected instrument performance in terms of optical quality and multi-wavelength radiometry precision, and the ensemble of observations contains a wide variety of features that are good analogs to multiple systems in Jupiter's atmosphere.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Annales Geophysicae, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy and AstrophysicsPhysics and Astronomy