PIA24436: High Energy and Juno's Stellar Reference Unit
 Target Name:  Jupiter
 Mission:  Juno
 Spacecraft:  Juno
 Instrument:  Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) 
 Product Size:  1920 x 1080 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  JPL
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA24436.tif (1.936 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA24436.jpg (131.1 kB)

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Original Caption Released with Image:

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This animation gives an X-ray view of the Juno spacecraft's Stellar Reference Unit (SRU) star camera (left) as it is bombarded by high-energy particles in Jupiter's inner radiation belts. Even though the SRU camera head is six times more heavily shielded than Juno's radiation vault, the highest-energy particles in Jupiter's extreme radiation environment can still penetrate, striking the imaging sensor inside. The signatures from high-energy electron and ion hits appear as dots, squiggles, and streaks (right) in the images collected by the SRU, like static on a television screen. Juno's Radiation Monitoring Investigation collects SRU images and uses image processing to extract these radiation-induced noise signatures to profile the radiation levels encountered by Juno during its close flybys of Jupiter.

More information about Juno is at http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2021-03-30