Who would've thought that one of Jupiter's moons was a Brian Eno album?
A new research dump from the Juno orbiter has given us a treat: Sights and sounds from our solar system's largest planet and its largest moon. The photos of the gas giant's surface are beautiful, but the real treat is the audio track.
The 50-second clip shows some positive sounds from the planet's magnetosphere, which is measured by the Waves instrument. There is an easy explanation for the sudden jump to a significantly higher pitch.
"This soundtrack makes you feel as if you were riding along as Juno sails past Ganymede for the first time in more than two decades," said Scott Bolton, a lead researcher on the project. "If you listen closely, you can hear the abrupt change to higher frequencies around the middle of the recording, which represents entry into a different region in the magnetosphere."
The University of Iowa's William Kurth is one of the lead researchers on the project and he believes that the change in frequencies is due to the passing of Juno from the nightside to the dayside.
This doesn't mean you'd hear what NASA said if you found yourself on the surface of the moon. The magnetic and radio waves collected by Juno are just data points, and NASA's team is responsible for shifting their frequencies into a range that's audible to most people.
During the same flyby that left us with this amazing photo of Ganymede, the Waves recording was collected.
The data drop gave us a new look at Jupiter. This one was collected on Nov. 29 and may be an artist's rendition of the planet.
Kevin M. Gill is the image processor.
It's not. The photo was taken by the "visible-light imager" and offers an up- close look at two of the planet's storm systems.
A shot from Jupiter compares a storm on the planet to an Earthly algae bloom in the Norwegian Sea. Lia Siegelman, an oceanographer who sees in space imagery like this an opportunity to glean a better understanding of Earth's oceans, prompted the comparison.
The image was processed by Gerald Eichstadt.
Siegelman said that the turbulence around the Jovian cyclones reminded him of the turbulence in the ocean. These are visible in high-resolution satellite images of the ocean that show the effects of plankton blooms.
You can read more about this from the NASA team.
