European Space Agency Shares First Images from JANUS Camera System of Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer

On August 27, TapTechNews reported that after the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) completed the world's first 'lunar-earth flyby', the European Space Agency shared the first batch of images taken by its JANUS camera system.

Introduction to the JANUS Camera System

The name JANUS comes from the Latin 'Jovis, Amorum ac Natorum Undique Scrutator', roughly meaning 'Guardian of Jupiter and all his lovers and descendants'.

The JANUS camera system was developed by the University of Naples Federico II and the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (ASI) and is an optical camera used to map the icy moons.

The JANUS camera system has 13 filters, a field of view of 1.3 degrees, a spatial resolution of 2.4 meters on Ganymede, and a spatial resolution of 10 kilometers on Jupiter.

Testing and Calibrating JANUS

The main purpose of JANUS's observations during the lunar-earth flyby is to assess the performance of the instrument rather than conduct scientific measurements.

Therefore, JANUS takes images using different camera settings and time intervals, somewhat like testing a DSLR camera for the first time. TapTechNews attaches relevant pictures as follows:

In some cases, researchers deliberately 'blurred' the images in order to test the resolution recovery algorithm. In other cases, they partially saturated the images to study the impact of the unsaturated areas.

The JANUS will change our understanding of Jupiter's icy moons. The resolution and coverage of its imaging of Jupiter's icy moons is 50 times greater than that of previous cameras sent to the Jupiter system. The camera is equipped with an on-board computer to manage all instrument functions, process instructions and send data back to Earth.