[jessriedel]

Jupiter either doesn't have a solid surface, or it lies very deep inside (like 4/5ths of the way to the center). So there isn't any surface to see, just clouds.

Juno will be passing within 3,000 miles of the tops of Jupiter's clouds. Since Jupiter's radius is 43,000 miles, it will fill the entire frame. The only question is how high-quality the camera is.

The camera is for public relations only (no science) and I don't know the resolution. But this photo was taken from 2.7M miles, so you can expect the resolution to get roughly 9 thousand times better.

EDIT:

> Jupiter itself will only appear to be 75 pixels across from JunoCam when Juno reaches the furthest point of its orbit around the planet. At its closest approaches JunoCam could achieve 15 km/pixel resolution from 4300 km, while Hubble has taken images of up to 119 km/pixel from 600 million km....The camera uses a Kodak image sensor, the KODAK KAI-2020, capable of color imaging at 1600 x 1200 pixels. It has a field of view of 18 x 3.4 degrees with three filters to provide color imaging.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JunoCam

[chaitanya]

> At its closest approaches JunoCam could achieve 15 km/pixel resolution from 4300 km

In comparison, the highest resolution photos of Pluto from New Horizons achieved 80 meters per pixel from a closest approach of 12500 km. Its amazing how good the camera was on New Horizons.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/new-horizons-best-close-up-of-p...

[jessriedel]

No doubt New Horizon's camera was phenomenal for the mission, but I'm actually not sure how good it was compared to something you could do with a terrestrial lens. (There are lots of compromises when you go to space.) Juno's camera is very modest by design: It's a wide-field of view and only a few megapixels, so basically a cell-phone camera.

[jonknee]

> It's a wide-field of view and only a few megapixels, so basically a cell-phone camera.

It's not similar to a cell phone camera at all. Cell phone cameras are usually much higher resolution (current iPhone is 8 megapixels vs the 2 for Juno), but with a much smaller sensor (iPhone cam has a 1.5µm pixel size vs 7.4µm for Juno).

[valarauca1]

Also light thresholds need to be taken into consideration. Jupiter is 5x[1] further from the Sun then Earth, so there is much less light to capture in an image.

[1] On average.

[jonknee]

Yup, that's what those big pixels are good for.

[jessriedel]

Um, so the best cell phone camera on the market is within a factor of 2 in linear resolution? I think that qualifies as "basically".

[pwthornton]

It's the opposite of cellphone camera. It has low megapixels and a large sensor size. This will allow a lot of light onto the sensor and it won't suffer from the noisiness that high megapixels on a smaller sensor suffer from.

[jessriedel]

The point is that, on the spectrum of all imaging devices you might put on a satellite, both Juno and a cell phone camera are in the same rough neighborhood. They are dwarfed by telephoto lens, or 200 megapixel sensors. Remember especially that the topic we are discussing is the resolution (km/pixel) at a particular distance (see above), and for this the lens are much more important than the particular CCD chosen.

[jonknee]

Resolution has very little to do with it. Many images from NASA are stitched, even the ones from New Horizons. The important part is light sensitivity (in the correct wavelengths!) and making sure that it can work in the radiation of Jupiter.

You can go buy a camera with the same sensor if you'd like, but they're expensive:

http://www.qsimaging.com/620-overview.html

I believe it's the same sensor that flew on the Curiosity mission and we all know those photos are fantastic. They are also flight tested, invaluable for missions like this where you only get one shot at it.

[jessriedel]

As you'll see if you look above, it was you who brought about the size of the sensor when critiquing my comment, which was addressing resolution.

You also seem to feel the need to defend Juno, as if I was attacking it somehow, so I don't think this conversation can be very productive.

[gherkin0]

That's actually way cheaper than I expected it to be. Though I supposed an actual spaceflight-worthy camera with that sensor would cost far more than the one you linked.

[dougmany]

>The camera is for public relations only

This statement made my day. I guess if a phone must have a camera on it then a spacecraft has to have one too.

[JoeAltmaier]

In fact I believe Juno has ice-penetrating radar, intended to probe for the mythical surface. We may be seeing images of its real surface for the first time soon

[mturmon]

I do not believe radar is part of the instrument set.

There is a "gravity sensor" which is really, I think, an extremely careful Doppler measurement which will allow us to infer the mass distribution within Jupiter.

[JoeAltmaier]

Yeah you're right. I was remembering the Europa probe I think. They did parts of both at the local University some years back.